


Water Into Wine

by Iben



Series: Blackgate 'verse [2]
Category: Aquaman (2018), Justice League (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-16 06:29:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 17
Words: 43,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18089201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iben/pseuds/Iben
Summary: Arthur has a plan when he arrives on the island, he is going to keep his head down and survive, but that plan goes to hell the moment he steps in to help another prisoner. That spur of the moment decision ends up affecting both of them, in ways he could never have foreseen.Note: There is no non-con between the main characters in the story.**This is a standalone story set in the same universe as another story of mine. It is not necessary to read the first one in order to read this, or vice versa.





	1. Chapter 1

Most people had already left, in little groups of two or three. A few had gone with some of the seasoned prisoners who had come to the docks to meet the ship, but I figured no one did that simply out of the goodness of their heart, so I hadn’t taken anyone up on the offer of food or a place to stay. 

Blackgate Island was a prison. I had been in prison before, but not like this one. It was an isolated island, smack in the middle of nowhere, and everyone here was a lifer. There were no guards, no regulations, and no chance of parole. No one knew what this place was really like, because no one ever left.

The ship I had arrived on was nothing but a tiny dot on the horizon now. After the prisoners had been unloaded, supplies had been dumped on the pier. A number of guys, armed guys, had gone to collect them once the ship was on its way back out to sea. There was a sign, halfway down the pier, I couldn’t read it from this distance, but I had seen it earlier. ‘No prisoners allowed beyond this point while ships are docked. Transgressors will be fired upon.’ 

There was nothing to do but start walking. It was a hot day, the sun beat down from a clear blue sky and there was not a lot of shadow to be had. I had pulled off my sweater and tied it around my hips. I would have taken my leather jacket off too, but I wanted to keep my hands free in case I needed them. 

But I saw no one. Except when I turned around. The kid was still there. He had been in the same cabin as I on the ship. There had been four of us in the cramped space, four bunk beds, meals and bathroom breaks three times a day. I hadn’t seen where the other two guys went, but this guy had stuck close to me ever since we left the ship. His name was Barry. I knew because he had told me, in a nervous sort of chatter in the otherwise quiet cabin, just as he had told me his dad was on the island. 

I wasn’t interested in his story. I was going to keep myself to myself as much as possible. That was usually a good strategy. I would get the lay of the land and then take it from there. I had told the kid to fuck off, but he kept walking some fifteen yards or so behind me. I ignored him. 

The land was surprisingly beautiful, there were meadows and copses of trees, all wild and untouched, save from the dirt road. I could hear the buzzing of insects and birds were chirping in the treetops. It was fucking sweltering, though. My T-shirt was soaking wet and it was sticking uncomfortably to my back. 

After a while I spotted a cliff that rose out of the greenery, a short distance away on the left side of the road, and a thin trickle of water ran steadily over the edge, turning the gray stone almost black. I turned off the road and headed straight into the bush. 

I wondered if there were snakes here. I wasn’t sure exactly where the island was located, nor how big it was. No one knew, except presumably the authorities that sent people here. The underbrush snagged on my jeans. The dirt was dry and dusty, my boots kicked up small clouds with each step, but considering how green the landscape was, it had to rain here somewhat regularly.

My guess had been correct, just below the cliff was a small stream. I could see the rocks on the bottom of it clearly and the sun glittered on the surface. It was a risk, but I figured it was a fairly small one. How much pollution could there be? Someone might be standing upstream taking a piss, but other than that it was probably safe. Besides, my throat was parched. 

I crouched down and scooped up water with my hands. It was pure and sweet on my tongue. I drank plenty and then I splashed some on my face and ran my fingers through my hair. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the kid, crouching by the stream too, still fifteen yards away. I looked the other way. Trees and bushes, nothing else. 

I rose and walked a few steps further away. I unbuckled my belt and undid my fly. As I emptied my bladder, the piss splashing against the root of a tree, I wondered if my shadow was taking a piss too, like some weird game of Simon says. But I didn’t turn around. I had no interest in watching another guy piss and if he tried to sneak up on me I would hear him, there were plenty of dry sticks and twigs on the ground that would give him away. 

When I had zipped back up I headed back to the road. After a little while I began to see signs of human habitat - farmed land and fences, a flock of sheep grazing lazily. People lived here, or at least survived here. I had heard stories, all of them guesswork and conjecture. It had been a fairly done deal that I would get life when I was caught and this place had loomed on the horizon from the start, but no one could tell me anything about it, not even my lawyer.

After about three hours of walking I finally came to a settlement. It was a small town, but not like any town I had ever seen in real life before. It looked like something out of a western movie. Considering how brown-skinned people usually fared in movies about the old west, I figured that wasn’t a very good sign. 

There were utilitarian, handpainted signs above some of the doors of the boxlike buildings lining what seemed to be the main street. Food & Drink. Bar. Things For Sale. Barbero. Some places didn’t have any signs, but I could figure out what they were easily enough. A blacksmith. A stable. There were a few cars parked haphazardly here and there, but they were all old models that you hardly ever saw back home anymore. 

I took care not to meet anyone’s gaze, but didn’t look away either. It was a kind of balance act. I nearly did a double take, though, when I spotted what I thought was a woman, dressed in an Amish style dress. However, it only took me a second to realize it wasn’t a woman at all - it was a guy in women’s clothing. A prison wife, I guessed, although the garb took the concept to a whole new level. 

I ducked between two buildings. The alley was narrow and smelled strongly of urine. Since I had expected some kind of body search, and there was always the risk of pickpockets, I had put my money in my boxers. I had a tightly rolled bundle of bills in a plastic bag and I had stowed it between my legs, behind my scrotum. Not very comfortable, but a small price to pay to be able to keep it. 

My dad had smuggled the money into my hand the last time I saw him. I didn’t know, and he didn’t know, if money would be of any use here. The island could have been nothing but a bare rock in the middle of the ocean, but I supposed in that case I could have used the bills as kindle. 

I made sure no one was watching and then I shoved my hands down my pants. Considering the smell, this alley was frequently used as a toilet, and at a cursory glance I would look as if I was taking a piss. 

With a few bills stuffed in my pocket instead, I headed back to the main street. My shadow was still there, loitering near the facade of the nearest building. 

One of the places located just a little further down the street looked like an old-fashioned saloon. It had a big front porch and on the porch were hookers, young men in colorful dresses. Garish makeup on their faces. They looked like shabby drag queens. 

I eschewed that place. They probably served food, but I didn’t even like titty bars, so I sure as hell didn’t want to have a meal while staring at those poor fucks. A little further down the street was a place I had passed earlier, with a sign that said ‘Food & Drink’ above the door. It was a small ramshackle building and the front porch consisted of nothing but a couple of planks with two empty chairs on them. 

Inside it was gloomy compared to the bright sunlight outside. It was just one, cramped room with unfinished walls. It had a bar and some crudely constructed tables and chairs. It smelled of unwashed bodies and booze, but there was also the distinct smell of something cooking. My stomach rumbled. 

Most of the tables were unoccupied. I glanced, without appearing to do so, at the two men seated by one of the tables. They were both white and looked like they hadn’t washed in a decade. I hadn’t expected this place to be inhabited by librarians and kindergarten teachers and these two guys looked as if they had done some bad shit, and then some, but they did nothing but stare at me.

They guy behind the bar was black. He gave me a disinterested look, but there was something fake about his casualness. He was sizing me up, wondering if I was going to be trouble.

“How much for a meal?” I asked.

The guy nodded at a chalkboard next to the bar and I was a bit annoyed with myself for not seeing it straight away. Written in surprisingly neat handwriting was a list of prices. I skipped the prices of booze. The chalkboard said:

Cost of meal today:  
4 Wayne scrips  
or 0,5 cup of lamp oil  
or 4 candles  
or 9 potatoes (or equivalent)  
or 1 bullet  
or 2 matches  
or 5 dollars

Five dollars? That was cheap. 

“A hand job from a woman is fine too today,” the guy behind the bar said.

I couldn’t tell if that was meant as a joke or not and I decided to just ignore it. I put five dollars on the bar. Out of the corner of my eye I kept watch on the other two guys. They hadn’t moved.

I took a table by the wall, where my back was covered and I could see both the entrance and the back door. The other two guys weren’t looking in my direction, but I was new here. While they had no way of knowing how well I would handle myself in a fight, they knew now that I had money and they probably assumed, correctly, that I didn’t have any friends. 

The barkeep soon returned with a bowl of something that looked like a stew and a bread roll. He placed a cup next to it on the table. 

“Water is on the house,” he said.

“Thanks.”

He returned to his spot behind the bar and I ate. It tasted pretty good, but I was ravenous so it probably would have no matter what. I tried not to eat too fast. 

The level of civilization here surprised me. I guessed there were some top dogs who kept the order, most likely it had been their guys who stayed behind and collected the supplies at the docks. It should have been a relief, but it also complicated things. I had to find a way to earn some money, or fucking potatoes or candles or whatever else shit served as currency here. And I had to do it while keeping my head down. I was going to be here a long time and I didn’t want any unnecessary hassle. 

When I was done eating I left. The sun had moved a fraction across the sky. The kid was still there. He wasn’t really a kid, but he was young, I probably had ten or fifteen years or so on him, and he was skinny. When I headed down the street, he followed.

“I need to find my dad,” he said.

“Get lost.”

It was harsh, I knew, but I had enough to deal with, not least the fact that I was fucking stuck here for the rest of my life. 

At the edge of town, where main street ended, was a church. It seemed deserted, but the building was intact and looked like it was being taken cared of, so I presumed it was in use. I didn’t go in. I wasn’t religious. I scoped out the rest of the town. I saw a few more of those ‘Amish women’. That was some fucking weird shit. 

An old guy was sitting on one of the chairs outside the bar where I had eaten earlier. The sun had sunk low in the sky and the street was awash in a golden, yellow light that did very little to make it look any less trite and worn. 

“Hey,” I said as way of greeting.

He peered up at me. 

“Hey,” he replied.

Getting a reply at all was a good sign in a place like this. 

“Anywhere to get a room around here?” I asked.

He was silent for a moment.

“Wayne’s place, I suppose, if you pay for a whole night with one of his girls,” he said then.

I figured that was the saloon I had seen earlier. I didn’t want to pay for a whole night with one of his ‘girls’. I gazed down the street. I could see Barry, some yards away, still following me around like a puppy. What was he expecting me to do for him? I didn’t know him. He’d had the bunk below mine on the ship, but that didn’t mean shit. 

“What about jobs?” I said. 

The old guy was quiet again for a few seconds before he spoke.

“This and that,” he said. “Might be someone needs a farmhand. Might be Wayne or Bane are recruiting, but I wouldn’t know about that.”

I knew nothing about farming. If Wayne ran a whorehouse, he might need some muscle. 

“What about mechanics?” I asked.

The guy smiled. “Do you see a lot of cars?” he said.

He had a point, it was a stupid question. He peered up at me again.

“You’re not so ugly, even if you are big,” he said, “get a shave and I’ll make you my wife.”

He laughed. 

“Fuck off,” I said.

He was still cackling when I turned and left. 

All things considered, my first day on the island wasn’t so bad. No one had tried to rob me and no one had tried to beat me up just for the fun of it. I had successfully interacted with the locals. It fucking sucked, though. This whole place was depressing as hell. I did my best not to think about how I was never getting out of here. 

Come sundown I had no place to go. I had decided I would rather sleep rough than spend my money on some hooker I didn’t want, just so I could sleep under a roof. Even though dusk had fallen there were still plenty of people out and about. Many of the houses had torches fixed to the facade and the street was dimly lit up. The shadows were deep. 

I headed for the edge of town. I would take my chances with wild animals, rather than sleep close to where there were a lot of people. Tomorrow I would have to see about finding some kind of job. I was strong, so that was in my favor, and I wasn’t a stranger to manual labor.

I sat with my back against the side of the church for a while. There were no torches here so I was out of sight, but I could see the movements on the street ahead. Figures moved in and out of the shadows. Every now and then the distant sound of a voice reached me. I could see the saloon from here; there was plenty of traffic in and out the door. 

After a while I made my way in between the trees behind the church. I didn’t go far. One spot of hard ground was as good as the next one. It was difficult to get comfortable, but I wasn’t sure I would be able to sleep anyway. Since the sun had set there was a slight chill in the air, but it wasn’t too bad and I used my sweater as a pillow. 

I wasn’t asleep when I heard it. A scream, or a shout, abruptly cut off, not that far away. I lay still. Then there was laughter. Another yell, that sounded like ‘No’. 

It wasn’t any of my business. This was a goddamn prison. I had to keep my head down. Don’t get involved. 

But I couldn’t. When I came clear of the trees I saw, in the faint light from the distant torches and the moon overhead, three guys surrounding a fourth one who was face down on the ground. They guy on the ground was Barry. They had pulled his pants down, two of them were holding his arms and the third one was trying to position his cock between Barry’s ass cheeks.

Barry was struggling and whimpering.

“Keep fucking still!”

“Don’t worry, bitch, we’re all gonna take our turn.” 

More laughter.

Whatever conscious thought I had about staying out of trouble vanished. A blood-hot surge of fury welled up inside me, like a lava stream. 

I had moved silently and stayed in the shadows near the church, so they had no idea I was there. I ran forward and tackled the guy who had his cock out, but made sure I stayed on my feet. That meant I didn’t hit him with as much force as I could have, but as expected, the other two came right for me.

Those two weren’t all that great at fighting. They signaled their every move way ahead. By the time the third guy had pulled up his pants and gotten back on his feet, one of the others were down. My biggest worry was that they might be armed, but none of them went for a weapon. The third guy, the fucking rapist, was faster. And he had skill. His buddy was still on his feet and lunging for me, but he wasn’t the main problem, the rapist was. 

I couldn’t get him to lose his balance. He hit hard and fast, going for my crotch and my kidneys. I had to block those punches. 

I took a punch on the jaw, moved my head back and to the side, to lessen the impact of the blow. I managed to knock the second idiot to the ground, but not number three. He must have had some kind of training before he got here. Maybe he was ex-military or maybe ex-something else.

He landed a punch to my shoulder and I felt the numbing effect all the way down to my fingertips. Damn he was strong. If he landed a blow to my head, I might go down and not be able to get up. 

I began to realize I was going to have to do some real damage. I pushed him, like a kid at playground, but with rather more force. And then I went for my knife. I had it in my sock. Like the money, I had put it out of sight to keep it safe in case I was searched. In a pat-down something in my boot might still have been found, but I couldn’t keep a knife in my boxers. At any rate, I hadn’t been searched. 

He spotted the knife and began to circle me, like a predator waiting to pounce. Come on, I thought. Come on, you fucking bastard!

He did. He was skilled enough to avoid the knife for a short while, but eventually I got a chance to stick it in his gut and I did. I forced the blade upwards and he made a strangled, gurgling noise. I stepped back, pulling the knife out as I did so. There was blood on my hand, I could feel it, warm and sticky in the cool night air.

The guy dropped to the ground. His friend, on his way up from where he had fallen earlier, scrambled for his dazed buddy on the ground. He got him upright and they ran. For a while I just stood there and I watched them go, until they disappeared out of view. My pulse was loud in my ears and I could feel the rise and fall of my chest with each breath.

Then I turned. The guy I had stabbed was on the ground, unmoving, dead or dying. I moved my gaze to the shadows near the church. I could see Barry. When I approached he took a step back. 

“Are you hurt?” I asked. 

No reply. I moved into the shadows myself and after a few seconds my eyes adjusted well enough for me to see that he had pulled his pants up and had his arms wrapped tightly around himself. 

“No,” he finally said. “Not really.”

It was too dark for me to make out his features clearly, but from what I could see he looked shell-shocked. 

I turned my head and looked at the dead guy. I had killed someone. I didn’t really feel any guilt, there was just a numb sort of feeling. 

“Come on,” I said. “Help me move him.”

Come dawn he would be in plain view from the street if he was lying where he was. I didn’t want to pick him up in a fireman grip, because that meant getting blood all over me, which would be pretty fucking conspicuous. I grabbed him by one arm, while Barry took hold of the other and then we dragged him.

We had only just reached the treeline when Barry let go. He doubled over and threw up. I heard him retch a couple of times.

“Come on,” I said then.

We dragged the dead guy into the woods. I had no idea how well-trafficked these woods were, although no one had come this way all evening, but it didn’t really matter. There had been witnesses, it was only a matter of time before the news spread.

When he was out of view I went back to the clearing by the church and kicked the ground a bit, enough to mask the largest of the blood stains. Then I took Barry to my hideout in the bushes. What the hell else was I supposed to do? 

I lay down, even though I knew all hope of sleep was gone. Barry remained sitting, his knees pulled up to his chest. 

“Have you killed a lot of people?” he asked tentatively.

I didn’t reply. 

“What’s your name?” he asked then after a little while.

I considered not answering that either. I didn’t feel like talking. But then I said:

“Arthur. Now shut up.”

He didn’t say anything more. 

I lay awake. I could hear him sniffle, like maybe he was crying. 

The dead guy had at least two friends. He had probably been the leader, judging by his level of skill and the fact that he was going to go first when they attacked Barry. But that didn’t mean the other two wouldn’t come for me and I had no idea what other friends they might have. I was in some deep shit.


	2. Chapter 2

At dawn I rose. Barry was sitting in the exact same position, so I figured he hadn’t slept either. He got up on his feet when I did and then he took a step in the same direction. I stopped.

“I’m gonna take a shit,” I said.

“Oh. Okay.” He looked down at his feet.

Using leaves instead of toilet paper sucked. Barry was still standing there when I got back. My next order of business was to find some water. I didn’t have much blood on me, aside from my hands, and I had bled a bit from at least one nostril, but I still needed to clean off my knife and I needed to drink.

Barry trailed after me. I didn’t know what to do with him. I realized that by coming to his aid last night I might have given the impression that I cared. Okay, so maybe I did care, in the sense that I didn’t want him to get raped, but I couldn’t be responsible for him. He was, what - twenty-one, twenty-two? He would have to learn how to fend for himself. Although, I could tell just by looking at him that that wasn’t likely to happen. 

There was a well, behind one of the houses at the edge of town. I didn’t see anyone and I quickly drank some and washed off. Barry drank some too. 

“Listen, kid,” I said when we were back on main street again. “You can’t keep following me around.”

“Could you just help me find my dad? Please?”

He was scared and desperate. I could see it on his face, plain as day. It made me feel like a shit, but I had enough to deal with.

“No,” I said.

When the town began to wake up I headed back to the same place I had been to yesterday and bought myself a meal. If the guys from last night had connections, I might have a few hours at the most. If they didn’t, well, they would most likely come for me at night, hoping to catch me off guard. Unless they had access to firepower, in which case they could just shoot me whenever they felt like it. 

After I had eaten I stepped back out onto the street. I saw no one who seemed to be paying me any special attention. I didn’t see either of the two guys, although I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I would recognize them, it had been pretty dark. 

The old guy from yesterday had talked about Wayne and Bane as if they were some kind of leaders here. Even aside from the fact that I wasn’t interested in aligning myself with a gang, the guy I had killed, and his friends, might belong to one of them. I had no way of knowing. 

Barry was trailing up and down the street, asking anyone he saw about an ‘Henry Allen’, whom I assumed was his dad. He addressed a guy wearing one of those Amish dresses and within seconds another guy swooped in and punched him. 

“Stay the fuck away from my wife, you cunt!”

I saw this and I did nothing. Slowly, Barry pulled himself to his feet. It was just a punch. He’d live.

At the edge of town I encountered a group of people clustered around a caravan of wagons, old-fashioned, horse- and oxen-drawn wagons. I observed them for a short moment and then I approached them.

I did not make the mistake of speaking to any of the guys wearing dresses, instead I walked up to an older guy, wearing pants, who looked like he might be in charge. He was tall, nearly my height, and even though he was probably about sixty, he looked fit and strong. 

“Excuse me,” I said. 

He turned his head. He had a weather-beaten face. His reddish beard was liberally sprinkled with gray.

“You guys heading out of here?” I asked.

He threw a glance at the carriages and nodded. I could tell from the way he looked at me that he was sizing me up. I guessed it was easy to tell I was a new arrival, from my clothes alone. He wore clothes that looked homespun to me, not that I was an expert.

“Yeah,” he said. 

“Where to?” I asked.

“Out west.”

“What’s out west?”

“Another town.”

I thought about that for a second.

“How far?” I asked.

He squinted a little against the sun which was already high up in the sky.

“The journey will take about a month.”

Shit, that was a long time. Too long to undertake just like that. Practically impossible to me, even if I had known the way, because I didn’t know how to survive in the wild and I had no supplies. 

The man gazed at me.

“Are you looking to buy in?” he asked.

My mind was spinning fast, although I tried to give the appearance of not caring too much. 

“The town out west any better than this one?” I asked.

It had to have some appeal, if people were willing to trek through the wilderness for a month to get there. Of course, my primary reason for wanting to go was to get out of here before anyone realized I had killed a man.

“A bit more laid back,” the man said. He gave a hint of a smile. “A simpler life.”

I wondered how simple that would be, given that there were practically no modernities here as far as I had seen. 

“You’re a new arrival?” 

I nodded. 

“Maybe we can work something out, if you’re interested in going.”

I was, but I still didn’t let it show how much. He gazed levelly at me. 

“What are you in for?” he asked.

I gazed back at him.

“Murder,” I said then.

His expression didn’t change.

“If you want in, there are two ways,” he said then. “You can work it off when we get there. That means working for me for five years, you’ll be fed, nothing else.”

Five years was practically nothing, since I was doing life. 

“Doing what?” I asked.

“Farming, construction, repairs, tending to animals.”

That sounded like a pretty sweet deal, all things considered. It was pretty fucking clear I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life here getting fat sitting on my ass anyway. But still, five years… 

“What’s the other way?” I asked. 

“Five hundred bucks, up front.”

I had five hundred dollars, I could pay him, but that meant spending a great deal of what was basically my fucking life savings. 

His gaze briefly went to something behind me.

“Five hundred each,” he said.

I glanced over my shoulder. Predictably, Barry was hovering nearby, looking at me. I turned back to the old guy.

“I’ll work it off,” I said. 

He nodded. He may have been old enough to be my father, but I had no doubt that if I were to renegade on our deal he would kill me, one way or another.

“And it’s just me,” I said, although I felt a twinge of guilt as I said it.

He nodded again and held out his hand. I shook it.

“Nereus,” he said.

“Arthur.”

Barry walked up to us then. 

“Um, sorry, but do you know someone called Henry Allen?”

He looked at Nereus. Nereus stared at him for a few seconds.

“No,” he said then. “Never heard of him.”

He turned away.

“We’re leaving in an hour,” he said over his shoulder to me. 

I figured it would be wise to stay out of sight until it was time to leave, so I headed for the edge of the woods. After a moment I heard steps behind me. Barry. 

I stopped and turned around.

“Leave me the fuck alone,” I said.

His eyes were wide and he looked as if he was on the verge of tears.

“Please, let me come too,” he said.

“Make your own fucking deal.”

He swallowed. “He wouldn’t let me, that old guy, he said I would be more trouble than I was worth.”

Jesus fucking Christ. 

“Please, help me. I don’t have five-hundred dollars.”

“No one is going to help you. You’re in prison!”

He swallowed. 

What was he even in for? He looked as if he wouldn’t be able to hurt a fly and he was incredibly naive. Maybe he had annoyed someone to death.

“Please,” he said. “I’ll… I’ll do anything you want.”

I made a disgusted face. I had committed pretty much every crime there was, although mostly stupid shit, like drunken brawls, but rape was not one of them. 

“Fuck off.”

An hour later I was back by the wagon. That’s when I realized Nereus wasn’t alone. He had a guy in a dress with him. And he wasn’t the only one in the caravan who did. 

“All set?” Nereus asked as he jumped down from the carriage.

I nodded. The guy in the dress took a seat behind the reigns. He didn’t look at me or even acknowledge that I was there. 

The caravan began to roll and we began to walk. The pace was slow enough that it was easy to keep up. I glanced over my shoulder. Barry was following. He was like a fucking tick. Did I have ‘good samaritan’ stamped on my forehead or something? It would be the first time in history anyone had given me that epithet. But I had fought those guys yesterday, and I had done nothing to him afterward. In his mind, that probably made me the safest bet in this place.

“Seems your little friend is set on going,” Nereus said.

Short of turning around and deck him, I didn’t see how I could stop Barry from walking along behind us. 

I just grunted in reply.

“I won’t feed him,” Nereus said, “not without getting paid.”

Nereus wasn’t a chatty guy, which suited me fine. We left the town behind. There was something that resembled a road, at first, but it was not much more than a strip of land devoid of trees

I didn’t mind walking, but it was fucking hot. I pulled off my leather jacket. 

“You can put it in the wagon,” Nereus said and then he turned to the guy holding the reigns. “Anita, take his jacket.”

Fucking hell. But I handed my jacket and my sweater to ‘Anita’, who took them without meeting my gaze. He was about the same age as Nereus. His hair came down almost to his waist, in a long braid, and he was clean-shaven. I gazed at the people walking ahead of us, alongside the next wagon. The dress-wearers were clean-shaven, those wearing pants were not. 

It was fucked up. I had done time before, a couple of short stints, and I was aware of the concept of prison wives, but this was some sick shit. I was not so stupid I said anything about it though.

At nightfall we made camp, the caravans arranged in a big circle. Fires were lit. ‘Anita’ cooked dinner. It was another stew, not unlike the one I had eaten at the bar. 

I hadn’t slept last night and then I had walked all day. I was exhausted. I just wanted to close my eyes and disappear into unconsciousness for a while. I didn’t know these people, but they were all relying on each other, a safety in numbers kind of thing, and now I was part of that. I figured I was about as safe as I could hope to be in this place.

I thought briefly about my dad and then I pushed those thoughts away. I glanced around at the faces illuminated by the fires burning here and there within the circle of wagons. Everyone here was a felon, but the mood was calm. People were talking, some had stretched out on the ground to sleep.

Somewhere, outside the circle of wagons, was Barry. He had walked all day, without eating, without drinking. He would die if he kept this up. As much as I didn’t want to, I felt responsible. 

Nereus looked as if he was about to get up and his silent ‘wife’ followed his lead.

“How much for the kid?” I asked.

Nereus watched me for a moment.

“Two more years,” he said, “for you. And he does the women’s work.”

I had figured it might be something along those lines. Barry might not be wearing one of those ridiculous dresses, but he basically looked like a girl anyway. Nereus hadn’t offered him the same deal he had offered me, because either he figured Barry wouldn’t be able to handle the work, or something like last night might happen again, in which case he would lose out on his payment.

Seven fucking years in total. But I couldn’t let the kid die, even if it was because of his own stubborn stupidity. 

“Fine,” I said.

My reluctance was probably notable in my tone of voice, because Nereus looked at me for another few seconds and then he said:

“That’s a good deal,” he said. 

I nodded. Nereus and Anita, I didn’t have any other name for the guy, got up and went inside their wagon. After a moment of staring into the fire I got up too. 

Outside the circle of wagons the darkness was nearly impenetrable. I blinked a few times. There were stars and the moon was out, and after a moment I could make out the shapes of the landscape. 

“Barry?” I said in a half-whisper. 

I couldn’t see him, but he had stuck to me like a fucking bandaid so far, so he couldn’t be far. After a few seconds I saw movement. I stayed still, until I saw that it was him.

“Get in here,” I said and jerked my head.

Tentatively he followed me between the wagons and onto the campsite. The food was gone, but I shoved a bottle of water at him. He gulped it down, then he looked at me. 

“Get some sleep,” I said.

I lay down close to the fire. Barry didn’t move. 

“Don’t stand there like an idiot,” I said. 

After a beat he lay down on the ground, a short distance away. 

“I can come with you?” he said after a moment.

God, I had traded two years of unpaid labor for this guy.

“Shut up,” I said.


	3. Chapter 3

The next couple of days consisted of nothing but walking, walking and more walking. We made camp at night, had something hot to eat, and then those who were lucky enough to own a wagon went to sleep inside it, while the rest of us slept on the ground. 

Then a wagon got stuck and a bunch of us had to pitch in to get it moving. Barry was, as always, hanging around close to me and he moved to push at the wagon too, but one of the guys shoved him out of the way. 

No one wearing pants would talk to him. The so-called ‘women’ wouldn’t talk to him either. Whenever he tried they would move away, their gazes on the ground. The only one who talked to him was me, and I did as little of that as possible. 

He was slightly less chatty than he had been on the ship, but he told me stuff about his life, like what types of food he liked and movies he had seen, and he told me he hoped he would find his dad. I told him to shut up. Not only because his chatter got on my nerves, but I didn’t want to be fucking reminded of all the things I would never have or see again.

“You know,” Nereus said to me one day while we were walking, “you would do him a favor if you made him your wife.”

A favor? 

“I don’t want a ‘wife’.”

“What you do is your business, of course, but the men here already thinks of him as a woman, and you have some sort of claim on him. He’ll never be one of us. And the wives won’t go near him, they’re not allowed to talk to men other than their husbands.”

I had already observed this, of course. It was a fairly straightforward system, fucked up though it was. 

I didn’t reply. I didn’t want a prison wife, not now, not ever. 

Barry kept talking about some TV show that night. Something about the wild west and robots, I didn’t know what the hell he was going on about. I was trying to get comfortable, using my sweater as a pillow, but the ground was fucking hard no matter which way you turned. 

“Will you shut up and sleep?” I said. 

He fell silent. 

The fire crackled and a few sparks rose to the sky. I had grown up in a small town and sometimes my dad and I would go on hikes, but I had never been this far out into no man’s land before. It was beautiful out here, in the daytime, when there was enough light to see by. The sunrises were spectacular. But the knowledge that I was stuck here weighed on me like a lead blanket. 

It had gotten heavier for every step I had taken over the past few days. Forever was a long time. I had never had any great plans for my life, but now I would do absolutely nothing. I’d work and eat and shit here, until I died. 

I saw movement over by one of the other fires. A blanket provided some modicum of decency, but it was still pretty fucking clear what was going on. One of the men was fucking his ‘wife’. The wife didn’t make a sound, he just lay there, staring at the ground. 

I looked away. I was aware of Barry lying just a short distance from me, probably seeing the same thing. I stared into the fire.

The next day was as monotonous as the one before. Nereus was driving the wagon and Anita walked. I walked a few steps behind him, he wouldn’t talk to me anyway, and Barry was next to me. He wasn’t talkative today, in fact he had hardly said a word. I didn’t know if that was because of what we had witnessed yesterday, but I figured it probably was. 

The landscape changed very little as we walked - wide open plains, some trees and rocks in the distance. But I had a feeling we were heading ever so slightly uphill.

“You okay?” I finally asked.

He shot me a glance and nodded. 

It got quiet again. I wondered what would happen if I wore out my shoes. Although, I had a pair of sturdy boots. Barry was wearing sneakers.

“That won’t happen to you,” I said after a while.

This time he just stared straight ahead. There was another silence. 

“Thank you,” he said then. “For everything.”

I didn’t know what to reply to that. 

That evening there was a chill in the air that even the warmth from the fire couldn’t keep at bay. The ground felt twice as hard to lie on. I put my sweater on instead of using it as a pillow.

Over the next couple of nights it just kept getting colder. 

“We’re heading up into the mountains,” Nereus said.

“Will the wagons be able to make that trip?” I asked.

“There’s a ravine we’ll pass through, it’s wide and flat enough.”

But it was still higher altitude and that evening Nereus handed me and Barry a couple of blankets. 

The blanket was old and musty, but it didn’t smell any worse than I did. 

“Thanks,” I said.

It made some difference, but the cold seeped through my clothes from below. I shuffled closer to the fire. I thought of sleeping bags and thermal underwear. Then I thought of soft, warm beds. The ground felt even harder and colder.

“Barry, you awake?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you wanna share the blankets? We could lie on one and use the other as cover?”

Silence for a second.

“Okay,” he said then.

I got up. Barry spread his blanket on the ground. We lay down, back to back, and arranged the other blanket on top of us. It felt strange. I could feel his back, pressed against mine. 

I didn’t even know him, except for the few tidbits I'd gotten here and there when he talked. He was twenty-two, he was a geek, judging by how often he had mentioned video games and science fiction movies, and he loved pizza.

He didn't know me either. In fact, he knew even less because I hadn't told him anything, aside from my name. And yet he was willing to share the blankets, just as I was, because it was fucking cold and hard out here.

I woke up the next morning feeling slightly less chilled to the bones. Slightly. What I wouldn't have given for a cup of hot coffee and a cigarillo... But there wasn't any coffee here, none of the others seemed to have any either, and no tobacco.

Instead we had tea, which was basically just hot water, and porridge. There were apple slices in the porridge, so at least I wouldn’t get scurvy. It was quiet. We huddled around our fire and the other parties huddled around theirs. Barry had one of the blankets wrapped around his shoulders and was cradling his cup in his hands. 

“There’s a bit more, do you want it?” Anita spoke in a hushed voice to Nereus. 

I pretended I didn’t hear or notice. It was amazing how quickly you caught on. I didn’t know what Nereus did to him when they were in the wagon, but I had never seen him hit him. Some of the other guys hit their ‘wives’. I had witnessed it a couple of times, a slap to the face or verbal abuse. No one ever hit or even talked back. 

I wasn’t some great defender of the weak and powerless. But that shit didn’t sit right with me. All the same, I said nothing. 

I got to sit on the driver’s seat, next to Nereus, a little later that day. He handed me the reigns. The leather was worn but sturdy in my hands. I didn’t really have to do anything, the animals just walked straight ahead. They knew more about how this worked than I did.

“Ever worked with livestock or horses before?” he asked.

“No.”

Nereus starting talking about animals, how to tend to them and how to make them do what you wanted them to do. I tried to memorize the things he said, he was going to expect me to know this, but it was like Greek to me. When I was a kid we had a dog. I fucking loved that dog, but having a pet hadn’t exactly prepared me for country life. 

“How long have you been here?” I asked after a moment of silence.

“About… thirty-eight years now,” Nereus said.

That was a long time. He had to have been in his early twenties when he got here.

“I was what you would call a political prisoner,” he said. “The ironic thing is that my country never owned up to sending people here. Officially, I died. That’s what my family was told.”

He sounded American to me, I couldn’t hear even a trace of an accent, but I guessed he was from someplace else then.

“That sucks,” I said. 

My dad knew exactly where I was. I wondered if that made it easier or harder on him. I felt something clutch at my heart and stopped my train of thoughts. 

“What about Anita?” I asked. I wasn’t allowed to talk to him, but I was unsure of whether I could talk about him or not. “How long has he been here?”

Nereus thought for a moment. “Thirty years,” he said then. 

I didn’t ask if they had been ‘together’ for as long. 

“And it’s ‘she’,” Nereus said. 

His tone of voice was neutral, not admonishing, as if he had forbearance with me because I was new so he didn’t expect me to get everything right. I nodded a little. 

We stopped earlier that day. The reason was plain to see. Visible between the trees, downhill from the campsite, was the glittering surface of a lake. Nereus handed me a small piece of yellowish soap when we had finished setting up camp. 

“Thanks,” I said.

That was decent of him, but considering the fact that he and Anita spent a lot of time in close proximity to both Barry and me, they probably wanted to avoid having to put up with the stink.

“Come on,” I said to Barry.

We made our way down the hill. Others were doing the same, but there was plenty of shoreline to be had. We were alone at our spot by the lake and I began pulling my clothes off.

“It’s so beautiful here,” Barry said, gazing out over the water. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

He was from Central City. He had told me.

“You weren’t a boy scout then?” I said. 

He smiled. “No.”

When I had undressed I crouched in the water, close to the shoreline. The water was fucking freezing, but I felt filthier than I ever had before in my life, so cleaning up outdid the discomfort. I used the soap to wash my hair and my face, then under my arms and lastly my junk. Then I got out of the water and handed the soap to Barry. 

He hesitated. At first I thought it was because of me, I figured he didn’t want to undress while I was in a state of undress as well, like he was worried I might do something, but then I realized that wasn’t it. He was waiting for me to get dressed, so that I would be ready, if someone else came along. 

I put my clothes back on. They were just as dirty as before and I felt instantly grimy again. Barry unlaced his sneakers. I looked away, because he had looked away while I washed. I tried to look as if I was keeping watch. I was keeping watch, but there was nothing to see, except for trees. 

When he was done we headed back towards camp. 

“Where are you from?” Barry asked as we made our way up the hill.

“Maine.”

“Like Stephen King! Have you read any of his books?”

“I’ve seen some movies.”

“They’re not nearly as good as the books.”

He was quiet for about two seconds.

“I was wondering, and I don’t want to be rude, but I’m just curious, are you white or not white?”

I shot him an annoyed glance. I didn’t mind the question, not really, but did he not realize where he was? Race was a really touchy subject for a whole lot of people and in a prison especially. Although, I had in fact not noticed any racism here, thus far. 

“I’m not white,” I said. 

“Okay.” I could see on his face that he wanted to ask more, but he didn’t dare to and just to be a dick I didn’t say anything more.

“I’m Jewish,” he said after a few more steps up the steep incline.

“Okay,” I said back.

“You’re not a big talker, I get that.”

I sighed. “I don’t have anything to say.” I raised my eyebrows at him, like, take the hint. 

That evening someone, by another fire, started singing. Whoever he was, he had a pretty good voice, and a few others joined in. As far as entertainment went, it was pretty pathetic, but it was something, more than nothing, which was what we’d had every other night. After the singing had stopped, and people had turned in for the night, I could hear some grunting here and there, as people did their business with their wives. 

I closed my eyes and tried to go to sleep. Barry’s back was pressed against mine.

“Hey, Arthur?” he said after a little while. 

“Yeah?”

“Do you mind if I turn around for a little while? My arm’s asleep.”

“Fine.”

He shimmied around behind me, the blanket slipped down and I tugged it back into place. After some rummaging around, which was pretty annoying when you were trying to sleep, he came to rest. He was tucked right up against my back. I could feel his breath in my hair and against the back of my neck. He kept his hands to himself though, he must have folded his arms tightly against his own body. 

It was kind of like spooning. Actually, it was exactly like spooning. It felt really weird. I couldn’t remember ever being this close to another guy before and definitely not in a situation resembling this one in any way. I had spooned with girls, but I had never been the little spoon before. Just go to sleep, I told myself. Don’t think so goddamn much.


	4. Chapter 4

We were covering less ground each day as the landscape grew rockier, slowing the progress of the wagons, and it was colder too. As the temperature dropped, the mood in the camp dropped as well. Arguments broke out around the campfires, mostly over stupid shit, but there was a tension in the air that hadn’t been there before. 

I had been to take a piss. By general agreement that had to take place outside the actual campsite. I came around the corner of a wagon and there was Barry and another guy. I knew the guy’s name, Terry. 

Terry had his hand in Barry’s hair, gripping it tightly, judging by how Barry was grimacing. My fingers curled into fists.

“Get the fuck off him!”

I was prepared to clock him, but he let go. 

He didn’t leave though, instead he stared me down. He was trying to look intimidating, but he looked like an idiot, with his little pig eyes and his egg-shaped head. He was a big guy, but flabby. No doubt he was pretty strong, but he would be slow. 

“I haven’t seen you claim her,” he said. “That means she’s available to the rest of us.”

I met his gaze. 

“He’s not fucking available,” I said. 

Terry gave me a nonchalant look, but he took a step back. He gestured at Barry.

“Don’t look like a wife,” he said, “means she ain’t no one’s wife.”

“Lay a hand on him and I’ll break it.”

Terry took another step back and shrugged in an attempt to appear unaffected. Maybe he was, at least to some degree; he had a couple of buddies, I didn’t. Except for Nereus, but he wasn’t exactly a friend.

Terry left and I stared after him, then I turned to Barry. “Are you okay?”

He nodded, but then his face crumpled and he grabbed my arm, just above my wrist, gripping firmly, as if he had to steady himself. His breaths were shaky.

“Hey…” I said. 

I didn’t know what to say.

“Nothing’s gonna happen to you,” I said. “I won’t let it.”

He held on to my arm, looking as if he was fighting tears. I used my other hand to grab his shoulder.

“You hear me, buddy?” I said. 

He nodded again, then he let go of my arm. 

“Maybe…” he said. He swallowed. “Maybe you should just say that I am your… wife.”

“Fuck. No, Barry.”

“If it’s safer…”

I stared at him. Then I shook my head.

“You can’t undo that,” I said. “Have you seen some of these guys? Look at Anita. You’d be stuck as a wife the rest of your life.”

Barry said nothing.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go have some dinner.”

I watched Terry and his friends sitting by their fire that evening. Just like the guys back in town, this was another trio. I was fairly certain I could take them. Three guys were manageable, if they were nothing but regular bozos. It wouldn’t be easy, but not impossible. I didn’t think either of them would give me as much trouble as the guy I had killed. 

Thinking back on that now, I wasn’t sure I really had to kill him. I wasn’t taking that many hits, I could have won, simply by waiting until I got a chance to knock him out or break his arm or something. But I was angry. And I was worried. I didn’t know if anyone else would come running, I didn’t know what would happen if I lost. I figured I would probably die, there was no law here and for all I knew, everyone I encountered had killed dozens of people. 

I lay awake later that evening, thinking. Barry was curled in on himself in front of me. We had given up on sleeping back to back - this was warmer. The only problem was what to do with my arm, the one I didn’t keep bent under my head. I didn’t want to hold him, that felt like going too far, this was already so at odds with who we were to each other and how we interacted during the day, but if we wanted to stay warm, we didn’t have much choice.

Terry and his friends wasn’t the only problem. The system they had here, who was considered a man and who was considered a woman, seemed almost religious in the way everyone abided to it. A wife was off-limits to everyone except ‘her’ husband and people respected that. It wasn’t all that complicated, thieving wasn’t allowed, even among criminals, and a wife was a piece of property. But in their eyes, Barry wasn’t really my property.

Maybe if he cut his hair? But no, I had long hair too, that wasn’t the issue. He wasn’t even clean-shaven any longer, although he didn’t have very heavy beard growth. He was young and somewhat androgynous and he clearly wasn’t be able to defend himself. Terry had just proved that - Barry could have punched him in the gut, in the nuts even, but he didn’t. That made him a perfect candidate to be a ‘woman’. 

I would just have to keep a close watch on him. Never let him wander off by himself. How the fuck did I end up in this situation? 

The next morning, when I woke up, I realized I had my arm around him. I must have moved during the night; balancing my arm on the side of my body wasn’t a very natural position. The next thing I realized was that he was lying so close to me, my morning wood was pressed against his ass. If he was awake, there was no chance he hadn’t noticed.

I eased back. He was a guy, he got them too, but it felt very wrong. Embarrassing for me, but more importantly, he’d been assaulted, twice. I didn’t know much about these things, I had never experienced anything like it myself, but I had heard other people tell their stories. 

He didn’t move, but I was pretty sure he was faking it. He had slept lightly on previous mornings. Well, I was happy to pretend if he was. I sat up and pushed my hair out of my face. It was early, the other people in the camp were still asleep. 

I put my hand on Barry’s shoulder and shook him a little. He ‘woke up’.

“Gonna take a piss,” I said. 

He got up and we made our way between the wagons and in among some nearby trees. It could barely be called a forest. It was just a couple of birches, clinging to the rocky hillside. The view was amazing. The first light of dawn had crept over the mountain tops and the ravine was bathed in gold. I could honestly say I had never taken a piss while staring at something so beautiful before. 

Anita made breakfast. I wondered if he thought it a hassle to have two more guys around to feed, but I couldn’t ask him. We had just finished eating when a ruckus broke out near one of the other fires. Two guys were in each other faces.

“You cock-fingering fag!”

“What did you call me?”

Insults flew, back and forth, but no one intervened, not until it looked as if fists were about to start flying as well, then Nereus looked at me. He jerked his head and I followed him over there.

“What’s going on?” he said.

The two guys, their names were Adam and Neil, were both red in the face and wild-eyed with anger. However, the fact that neither of them had thrown the first punch yet, hinted at the fact that neither of them were all too keen to do so.

It turned out to be nothing, just a case of bad moods. Someone had nudged someone with his foot as he walked past. Everyone was miserable because they were cold and we walked for hours and hours every day, only to have the same, boring meal and nothing to do except stare into the flames, night after night. 

They both calmed down, enough to stop yelling and to turn their backs to each other anyway, and Nereus and I walked back to our own fire.

“Cock-fingering?” I asked. 

The corners of Nereus’ mouth tugged upwards.

“That’s a serious insult,” he said. 

He threw me a glance.

“Let me put it this way, if ever you decide to take a wife, she should be the one servicing you, not the other way around.”

So it was basically a form of homophobia. In a place where everyone was male and those who were having sex were having it with other men. What a fucking place this was.

Keeping a close eye on Barry turned out to be pretty easy; he stuck close to me everywhere I went. Even when I went to take a shit he hovered nearby; it could have given a more fussy guy a constipation problem. 

It made me think of when I was about twelve or thirteen. Maybe I was a little younger, maybe I was a little older, I couldn’t remember exactly, but my interest in girls had been awoken, to the degree that I wondered what it would be like to have a girlfriend. And I thought a lot about what would happen if you had to fart when she was in the room? Since I had grown up with just my dad, I didn’t realize that girls farted too. It was a huge problem in my mind. 

Then I got my first girlfriend and then I dated other girls. I couldn’t remember the first time I farted in front of a girl, but I remember the first girl who did so in front of me. We were at my house, watching TV. Her face went tomato red, I had never seen anyone blush like that. I started laughing. ‘Sorry,’ she said. I laughed some more, in retrospect that was probably not the most polite way to handle her embarrassment, but then she started laughing too. 

“Do you think it’s much further?” Barry asked when I stepped back out from the bushes.

“How would I know? Ask Nereus.”

“He doesn’t really talk to me.”

That was true. I sighed.

“Listen,” I said, “you should think about trying to man up a bit more.”

He gave me a look, a sort head to to toe kind of look, like he was contemplating emulating my style. He made a hesitant face.

“I’m gay,” he said.

Oh, fuck. 

“Don’t tell anyone else that!” I said.

He shook his head.

“Jesus, Barry…”

“Sorry.”

That made me feel bad. I didn’t mean it like that. 

“I don’t care,” I said. “It’s just… This is a fucking prison.”

“I know.”

“If anyone finds out…”

“I know.”

He put his hands in his pockets and raised his shoulders a little.

“I don’t know how to be like you,” he said. “I don’t talk like you, I don’t look like you.”

I was about twice the size of him. I had done time before, but even if that hadn’t been the case, the kind of men who were here, I had encountered guys like that my whole life. In a lot of ways, I was that kind of man. Barry wasn’t.

“I’m looking out for you,” I said.

“I know. Thank you.”

“But you should learn how to fight.”

He smiled a little. “I’m good at running away. Except, there’s nowhere to run to here.”

“What are you in for anyway?” 

It didn’t make any sense, what could he possibly have done that had earned him a life sentence?

He got a kind of sheepish look on his face. He looked at the ground, then threw me a glance.

“Um… I…” 

A bad feeling began to spread in my gut. Shit, no… I wanted to be wrong about this, but he had talked a lot about his dad, about finding him… 

“There was an incident,” he said, “and I was there. I didn’t actually do it, but I sort of said I did…”

“For fuck’s sake!” I turned away.

He was just a kid. And he was here for no reason at all.

“I had to,” he said.

I turned back to face him.

“The hell you did! You threw away your whole life!”

“I don’t really have a life.”

“Anything is better than this.”

“My dad is the only family I’ve got.”

“And do you think he’d want you to be here? Fuck Barry, you don’t even know if you’re gonna find him. He could be dead!”

He was quiet for a moment.

“Does your family want you to be here?” he said then.

I stared at the mountains. Said nothing.

“You’ve never told me what you did, to get sent here,” Barry said after another few seconds.

I kept my gaze fixed on the distant peaks. 

“I killed a man,” I finally said.

It was his turn to say nothing. I turned my gaze to him. How could he be so goddamn stupid? Even so, I didn’t really want him to think I was some homicidal maniac. Then again, maybe I was? I had killed another man now. But I would never hurt him.

“My mom was raped,” I said. “The guy who did it beat her so bad... she didn’t make it. And then he got off. I tracked him down and killed him.”

Everyone looked at me differently afterwards. Even my dad, although he tried not to. He stood by me, despite the fact that he disagreed with what I had done. He didn’t turn me in and I evaded the long arm of the law for nearly eight months, before they caught me. 

I didn’t regret it, but I was sorry I let my dad down. He was afraid of losing me and that was exactly what happened. It was inevitable, and the few times I saw him afterwards, I could see the grief weighing on his shoulders already. He was a strong man, the strongest man I knew, but that was hard for him. 

“I’m sorry about your mom,” Barry said. “My mom died too, when I was nine.”

He had come here in search of his dad and I had, in effect, abandoned mine. I couldn’t let the man who killed my mom escape justice, but I broke my old man’s heart and I was never going to see him again.

“Let’s head back to camp,” I said, “they’re probably ready to roll.”

I grabbed his neck and gave it a squeeze and then we headed back towards the wagons.


	5. Chapter 5

I had told Barry I didn’t care that he was gay and I didn’t, not really. But I couldn’t help thinking about it, especially when we were curled up under the blanket at night. It felt weird to me, but I guessed maybe not so weird to him? That made me a bit awkward. But what the hell, if one of us was less bothered by it, that was probably a good thing. 

My hands were cold. I wondered how much warmer it was in the wagons. They didn’t exactly have central heating. 

“I need to warm my hands,” I said. 

I had planned to move back, so I could stick them in my armpits, but Barry lifted his elbow away from his body. I hesitated. I had the fleeting thought that he might the get impression that I was coming on to him. Then I figured I was probably being an idiot, and a vain one at that. 

Fuck it. I wrapped my arm around him and pressed my hand against his chest. He was warm. He lifted his head and I straightened my other arm, then bent it so I could put my hand under the blanket. Barry took my hand between both of his and rubbed it. 

“Better?” he asked.

“Yup.”

It would have been a lie to say I didn’t feel weirded out. His head was resting against my bicep and my nose was practically in his hair. 

“Hopefully it’ll get warmer once we come down from the mountains,” he said. “Do you think it snows here?”

“Probably.”

I had the feeling he was trying to make me feel more at ease, talking about the fucking weather. That was nice of him, but I would prefer if we didn’t talk, so I didn’t say anything else and he didn’t either.

I woke up when Barry was suddenly yanked away. It took me a fraction of a second to realize what was happening, but then I was on my feet.

It was Terry. He was holding Barry by his hair, again, and grinning. I could see him clearly, in the orange light from the fire that had yet to burn down. 

The idiot had come alone. 

He had been drinking during the evening. I had noticed this because I wouldn’t have minded a shot or two myself, to keep me warm.

“Let him go,” I said.

“I’m taking her.”

“No, you’re not.”

“She ain’t yours. I’m claiming her.”

He pushed Barry down, so he landed roughly on his hands and knees. Terry truly was an idiot, because he didn’t realize he’d just let go of the one reason I had not to come at him full force. 

And I did. It was over quickly. He was slow and he had greatly overestimated his own prowess in a fight. I stamped on his knee and he howled like an animal before slaughter.

A few heads had popped up from beneath the blankets and people were peeking out of their caravans to see what was going on. Terry was whimpering, bleeding from his mouth and his nose, and his hands were hovering above his knee. I leaned down over him.

“He’s mine!” I said, right in his face.

He gave me a furious look.

“Fucking faggot!” he spat.

I smiled at him. “Worry about your own fucking cock, if you wanna keep it.”

I straightened. The whole scuffle had taken place right next to our fire, and I didn’t want to go back to bed with Terry just a few feet away, so I grabbed the back of his shirt and dragged him. Not to his own fire, he could make his own way over there, but to the middle of the campsite. 

Then I went back. Barry was still on the ground, but he had scrambled almost all the way back to the blankets.

“Let’s go back to bed,” I said, straightening the blankets.

“What if he comes back?”

“He can’t walk.”

“What if someone else comes?”

I threw a quick glance around the campsite. No one moved, but I wasn’t planning on sleeping.

“I’ll keep watch,” I said.

We lay back down, in the same position as before, but I kept my eyes open. Barry didn’t appear to be sleeping either. I could feel his chest rise and fall beneath my hand, but not slow and regular.

If we could find his dad… I thought. But there was no guarantee that we would, in fact it was pretty damn unlikely. Nereus had told me there were a number of different settlements on the island. Barry’s dad could be anywhere, if he was even still alive. He might be living as someone’s fucking wife, for all we knew, and then he would be of no help at all.

It was down to me to keep Barry safe. But I was starting to see that it would be more difficult than I had first thought. Terry was an idiot, and he had been drunk, but he wouldn’t have dared to do what he did, in full view of everyone, if he didn’t think he had every right to do it. I could fight, but how many times would I have to do so? At some point, someone might kick my ass. 

Since Barry wasn’t my wife, I didn’t have an official claim on him and no one would back me up. In fact, I lost prestige just by sharing blankets with someone who was dressed as a man. I didn’t give a shit about what these assholes thought, but there was a very real cost attached to it in a place like this. 

I was awake all through the night, but no one came. Terry’s friends got up and dragged him back to their fire, but everyone else stayed where they were. 

Come morning I was tired. Barry was pale and looked like he hadn’t slept either. Anita made breakfast. Nereus glanced in the direction of Terry and his friends. I shot a glance at them too. They looked to be haggling with the owner of the caravan. 

“Have you given any more thought to my suggestion?” Nereus said after a while, finally breaking the silence.

I was in a shitty mood, but I realized he was trying to help, so I bit back my retort. I shot a glance at Berry, who looked back at me. I didn’t know him well enough to read him like an open book, not that I had ever been able to do that with anyone, but it was plain as day that he was scared. 

He had already suggested it once, but I felt uncomfortable as hell just thinking about it. I had said ‘He’s mine’ last night, but that was for Terry’s benefit and for the benefit of all of those who were watching. I didn’t actually think like that. If we pretended he was my ‘wife’, he’d be safe. Theoretically. 

I sighed and pulled a hand over my beard.

“This will keep on happening,” Nereus said. “Just letting you know.”

There was a delay in getting the convoy en route that morning, due to the fact that Terry had problems catching a ride. I could see his predicament; left out here he’d be dead within a week. But I didn’t give a shit. Eventually he managed to agree on a price with one of the wagon owners, to ride in the back, and we were on our way.

Barry and I walked next to Nereus’ wagon. Nereus and Anita were both sitting on the driver’s seat. 

“Wouldn’t it be easier?” Barry said after we had walked in silence for a while.

I didn’t reply.

“I don’t want you getting hurt, because of me,” he said.

I shot him a glance. 

“I wish I could fight like you do,” he said. “Although it’s quite terrifying, to be honest. But I can’t.”

“You’d be considered a ‘woman’ the rest of your life.”

“At least I’d be alive. And so would you.”

It was quiet. This problem wasn’t going to go away, that much was clear. Nereus had told me as much.

“You’re not so bad,” Barry said then. “To be married to, I mean. Except you snore something unbelievably.”

I turned my head and gave him an annoyed look. This wasn’t a fucking joke. Then I thought about what he had said.

“I do?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. 

He smiled a little. 

“Fuck you,” I said, but I couldn’t keep from smiling a little too.

It was the easy, obvious solution. I didn’t have any other bright ideas. 

“Alright,” I said. “If you’re sure.”

His expression turned serious again and he nodded. It was probably the only way to keep both of us safe, but that didn’t mean it felt right.

When we were setting up camp that evening I asked Nereus what we had to do to make Barry my wife. I had a hard time picturing some sort of wedding ceremony and unsurprisingly there wasn’t one.

“All it takes is that he looks and acts like a woman,” Nereus said. “You’ve already done enough to stake your claim.”

So that was straightforward enough.

“Where would we get a dress?” I asked. “I don’t see any shops around here.”

“Well, I could give you one of Anita’s.”

“And how many years is that gonna cost me?”

Nereus smiled. “No more years,” he said, “but I could sell you one for a few dollars.”

He didn’t know I had any money. I had moved the bundle from my boxers to my pocket, I walked for hours every day, it was just too uncomfortable to keep it there, but he hadn’t seen it. No one had, I had made sure of that. But he could have made an educated guess. Or he was just guessing.

I gave nothing away. 

“Two dollars,” I said then.

“You don’t get a whole dress for two dollars.”

“Just sell me a fucking skirt then.”

He smiled at that. I was going to work for him for seven years. He could throw in a fucking dress. 

“I’ll trade you,” he said, “for the clothes he’s wearing now.”

That could be a bargain, or he could be ripping me off, I had no way of knowing. I hated not knowing, I was at a constant disadvantage here. Part of the price of getting the hell out of town the way we had. 

It seemed he more or less read my mind, however, because he said:

“That’s the same price you’d get anywhere else,” he said.

“Alright.”

I didn’t have much choice. Barry didn’t seem to mind, when I told him. He didn’t have any special attachment to the clothes he was wearing, he explained. In the end Nereus probably did us a favor, because he threw in a wool shawl. 

He lent us a knife as well, smaller than the one I had, which he didn’t know I had by the way. I had seen Anita shave a couple of times, in the back of the wagon. He had a small mirror, which he propped up on a box, but they didn’t lend us that. Maybe it was too prized a possession. 

That meant Barry couldn’t shave himself, so I had to do it. He took a seat on a rock. We had walked a short distance away from the camp and there was no one else around. I wasn’t sure how he felt about all of this, but I felt embarrassed about the whole thing. 

“Lather yourself up, will you?” I said.

We had a bucket of water and some soap, also courtesy of Nereus. 

Barry dutifully worked up as much lather as possible, then he sat back. I took a step closer.

“Have you done this before?” he asked just as I leaned forward. He eyed the knife in my hand.

I had shaved myself using a straight razor. Safety razors were for sissies. But I had never shaved someone else.

“Yeah,” I said. 

“Okay.”

He swallowed. I didn’t blame him. 

“Just sit still,” I said.

I carefully pulled the edge of the knife across his cheek. It made a soft, rasping sound. I went about it slowly, I didn’t want to cut him, but eventually he was beard-free. He splashed some water on his face and pulled his hand over his jaw. I hadn’t done too badly, it was a pretty close shave. 

Barry picked up a bottle of oil that sat in the dry grass by his feet, also courtesy of Nereus. It was the same stuff that went in the dinner pot every night. He rubbed some onto his face. Then he stood up and began to undress. I turned away to give him some privacy. 

“How do I look?” he said after a short while.

The dress was yellow, but the color had faded a bit with age. It was a little big on him. Anita wasn’t a big guy, but Barry was scrawnier because he was younger. He looked like an idiot, they all did, but I didn’t want to say that. It wasn’t his fault. I didn’t know what to say. 

He wrapped his arms around himself, tugging the shawl a little tighter.

“I’ve actually put on a dress once before,” he said, smiling a little uncertainly.

Whatever those circumstances might have been, it couldn’t have been anything like this. 

“You done?” I said.

“Yeah.”

I felt like an idiot when we walked back into camp, so I couldn’t even begin to grasp how stupid Barry must have felt. I felt sorry for him and ashamed about my part in the whole thing. 

But his change of clothes was like flipping a magic fucking switch. There were no more Terrys, although Terry himself was out of commission, and no more sideways glances. I had thought those were mostly about the two of us being new - in this kind of environment you expected people to watch your every move, especially if you were an unknown commodity. But strength and fighting skills, those things were respected, and taking a wife was the ultimate way of proving you had that.

And Anita started talking to Barry. Only in a hushed voice and only when I was out of earshot, but still, it was fucking weird. 

“What does he say?” I asked Barry one evening, when we were under the blanket.

“He’s teaching me stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Like what to do and what not to do. He’s gonna teach me a whole bunch of stuff, when we get to wherever it is, the other town. He’s nice.”

“He’s a felon.”

Barry didn’t say anything for a moment.

“So are you,” he said then. “And me.”

It was quiet for a while. 

“I need a name,” he said then.

“No.”

“You have to call me something.”

“I’m not picking a goddamn name.”

“What about ‘Betty’?”

“For fuck’s sake.”

I disentangled myself from the blanket and got up. I couldn’t lie there and listen to him. I walked between the wagons, into the darkness beyond. I wasn’t unaware of the irony that the fact that I was able to do so, and leave him there alone, was because of this whole charade. 

But I didn’t go far. I could still see him, in the firelight between the wagons. So I saw when he got up and came after me.

I stayed where I was. He stopped a few feet away from me.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

None of this was okay. 

I had landed myself here. I had known what would happen, so I didn’t feel entitled to wish for anything else, but goddamn it, in that moment I wanted to go home. I wanted to see my dad again. Fuck!

He took a hesitant forward and then I felt his hand on my shoulder. He patted it a few times. The gesture was awkward and fucking sweet.

I took a deep breath. 

“Fuck,” I said. There wasn’t much else to say. 

I pulled my hands through my hair. I felt a little embarrassed.

“Do you want a hug?” he said.

“No,” I said and then I added, because I knew he was trying to be kind, “thanks.”

We stood there in silence for a moment. The night air was crisp, cold against my face. Then I turned and headed back. Barry followed and we lay down on the blanket again. I pulled the other blanket over us.


	6. Chapter 6

“Anita is going to wash some clothes, he’s gonna show me how to do it, so do you want me to wash any of yours?”

I glanced over Barry’s shoulder. Anita was waiting a short distance away, a bundle in his arms.

I only had the clothes I was wearing. And Barry washing any of them didn’t sit right with me anyway.

“It’s one of the jobs I’m gonna do,” Barry said. He met my gaze.

“Alright.”

Walking around naked wasn’t an option, but my clothes were filthy, so washing what was possible to wash was not such a stupid idea. 

I stepped between the wagons, for some modicum of privacy. I pulled my jeans and boxers off and then I stepped back into the jeans. Next I took off my jacket and my sweater and peeled off my T-shirt. I put the sweater and jacket back on, then I walked back to Barry.

“Sorry about this,” I said, “they’re fucking disgusting.” 

“It’s okay.”

I watched him go with Anita. He was being a veritable saint about all this. I sure as hell wouldn’t have been, not if I had to wash some other guy’s dirty boxers, or any of the rest of it either. 

All around the camp people were taking care of their belongings, cooking dinner, talking, napping. Some guy was getting his cock sucked, barely concealed between two wagons.

I couldn't wait for this journey to be over. Not that I believed that what awaited us was any better, but I was just so damn tired of the road, even though there was no actual road, and I just wanted five goddamn minutes to myself.

That evening Nereus and Anita retired early, so it was just me and Barry sitting by the fire. He was feeding it small sticks and twigs that he picked up off the ground. 

“What’s your favorite movie?” he asked.

Why did he insist on talking about all that stuff?

“I don’t know,” I said. I watched him put a dry leaf at the edge of the fire. “Maybe Blade Runner.”

He looked at me and smiled. 

“That one’s good,” he said.

I nodded a little. “Yeah.”

I saw a guy called Oliver making his way from fire to fire. I hadn’t spoken much to him, I hadn’t spoken much to anyone, but he was pretty friendly, compared to many others. I watched his approach. When he reached us he crouched down on the opposite side of the fire. He had a blanket over his shoulders.

“Hey, man,” he said to me. “Do you have any grease? I’ll pay you handsomely for it, I’ve got matches, or socks…”

I shook my head. 

“A whetstone...” he said.

“Don’t have any.”

He sighed. “Okay. Have a good one.”

He rose and I watched him jog over to the next fire. That was weird.

“Why the fuck is he so desperate for grease?” I said. 

I said it more or less to myself, but Barry replied.

“Um… I think I know what he wants it for,” he said. 

I turned my gaze to him. “Yeah?”

He had a funny look on his face. 

“Yeah, you know…”

No, I didn’t know. But then the penny dropped. Barry’s slightly embarrassed expression made it clear it wasn’t about a desperate need to shine a pair of boots and I finally made the connection.

“Right,” I said.

“Yeah. There’s probably not any real lube here.”

I rubbed my forehead. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

“It’s actually really nice, if it’s done right,” he said after a brief pause.

I shot him a look of disbelief. Did he not have any restraints?

“You haven’t tried it?” he said.

“I’m not talking about this with you.”

He went quiet.

I hadn’t tried it. Definitely not myself, but not with any of the women I’d slept with either. I didn’t see the point. 

I stared into the fire. I was never going to get laid again. Never going to hold a woman again. Never see a pair of breasts or feel them in my hands. Or sink into the warmth and wetness that felt so fucking amazing. A woman’s hands on me. Fall in love. It was all gone.

“I’m going to sleep.” I lay down on the blanket. 

After a moment Barry came and lay down in front of me. I wanted to push him away, but I didn’t. 

The next day we came to a small settlement. It was nothing more than a few shabby houses, clustered around a well, but people came out of the houses and in from the surrounding fields when the caravan approached.

“I’m gonna see if anyone knows my dad,” Barry said.

Just as he was about to walk off, I remembered.

“You can’t,” I said. 

He turned to look at me. I gestured at him, at his clothes.

“No one’s gonna talk to you.”

His face fell. He had obviously forgotten too.

“I’ll ask around,” I said.

He nodded a little. “Henry Allen.”

“Yeah, I know.”

I asked the villagers, there were not very many of them, but no one had heard of an Henry Allen. I headed back to the caravan and I felt shitty when I shook my head, because Barry’s hopeful expression turned into one of disappointment. At the same time, I couldn’t help but to feel annoyed with him. He was on damn a fool’s errand. And even if he did find his dad, against all odds, then what? 

The people from the caravan were bartering with the villagers. Barry and I leaned against the side of the wagon; we didn’t have anything to barter with and I wasn’t going to spend any money until I had a better idea of what we were going to need. 

Barry walked up to the front of the wagon.

“What are they buying?” he asked.

Anita was on the driver’s seat, out of sight from where I stood.

“All kinds of things,” Anita said. “The people who live here are probably desperate for things that can only be acquired from the shipments. That means you can get a good price on the things they make here.”

“What can they make here?”

“Food, wool, booze probably.”

I would not have minded some booze, but I knew it would be stupid to spend money on that.

It was evident that evening that booze was exactly what a lot of people had bought. The camp was filled with the sound of loud voices. An impromptu boxing match was arranged as entertainment. Oliver must have bartered for some grease, because I saw him disappear between two of the wagons, his wife trailing after him.

Nereus and Anita had gone inside their wagon. 

“You don’t drink alcohol?” Barry asked me.

“I don’t have anything to drink, Barry.”

It was quiet for a moment. Or rather the opposite of quiet. There was hardly any point trying to go to sleep.

“Actually,” I said, “I haven’t been sober this many days in a row since… I don’t even know.”

Barry smiled a little. 

“It’s fucking tragic,” I said. 

“I don’t really drink much. I get this thing, where I don’t remember what happened.”

I looked at him. “Yeah, that’s called a blackout.”

He smiled again. “I know, but I don’t need to drink very much for that to happen.”

“You’re a lightweight.”

“I think it’s some kind of allergic reaction…”

“You keep telling yourself that.”

He laughed a little and I smiled. 

***

“Hey, man.”

Oliver sat down on the log next to me. He had his bow with him. I’d seen him with it before and apparently he was a skilled hunter, because he’d brought down a deer some days ago. 

I just wanted to be left the hell alone. Why was that such a complicated concept to grasp?

“Enjoying the view?”

I was, sort of. From here you could see the rolling canvas of tree tops, like an ocean of green, with a hint of yellow thrown in here and there, all the way to the horizon.

“See those two hill over there? Pass between them, and then a bit further and you’ll come across a town. A coastal town. Ships from the outside arrive there, carrying supplies.”

I said nothing. 

“I don’t know if you’re into farming, but…” He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “I’m not.”

I waited. He was working up to making some sort of proposition. 

“There are some of us who are planning on going,” he said. “Interested?”

I stared straight ahead.

“Why are you asking?” 

“We could use a man of your abilities. I saw you take down Terry, that was some impressive stuff.”

I sat quiet.

“Look,” Oliver said after a few seconds. “How many years’ worth of labor did you have to trade to get here? Why work for some old cunt, when you could be working for yourself?”

I shot him a glance. He raised his eyebrows.

“I’m just saying,” he said.

“How many years did you trade?” 

“Eight.” He smiled and it wasn’t hard to see that he had never had any intention on working off his debt. This had been his plan all along. “You in?”

I didn’t know, so I didn’t reply.

“We’re leaving tonight,” he said and then he stood. “We’re bringing the wives.”


	7. Chapter 7

I thought about Oliver’s proposition. In fact, I thought of nothing else all evening. I felt undecided. I didn’t have enough information, there were too many unknowns to make any kind of informed decision. I knew next to nothing about either town.

I felt a small twinge of guilt at the thought of abandoning Nereus. He’d been straightforward with me and all things considered, he had been pretty fair. Sure, he had demanded a pretty steep price to take me and Barry west, but this was an eat or get eaten kind of world. Maybe that said all that needed to be said.

I would have liked to discuss it with Barry. It didn’t feel right to make this kind of decision for the both of us without even hearing what he thought about it. But I didn’t get a chance to talk to him, because there were people around all the time. 

When Nereus and Anita had gone inside the wagon, Barry and I lay down in front of the fire. But I didn’t sleep. I still hadn’t decided. Head west, and we were going to be fed at least. Head to the coast, and there were no guarantees, but I would have a shot at earning money.

I watched the other fires. People were settling down. I could see Oliver, nestled under a blanket with his wife, but I was certain he wasn’t asleep.

In the end, the prospect of being free, of not being indebted to someone else, made up my mind for me. It was probably a stupid decision, it was definitely the less safe one, but I had been like that my whole life. 

I saw when Oliver and his wife rose, in the faint light from the fading fires, and I shook Barry’s shoulder.

“Wake up,” I whispered.

He made a sleepy sound. 

“Be quiet.”

Aside from Oliver, the others who were silently getting up were Clark and John, and John’s wife. I knew their names, but I didn’t know them. 

“What’s going on?” Barry said.

I put my finger to my lips to tell him to be quiet. He had a look of bewilderment, and fright, on his face. This was a shitty thing to do to him, it might not be what he wanted, but I couldn’t leave him. It was better for him to come with me, I reasoned, at least then no one would assault him.

I gathered up the blankets. We didn’t have anything else. It would be too great a risk to try to take something from the wagon, Nereus and Anita might be awake in there. Then I spotted the tinderbox on the ground. Nereus or Anita usually stowed that away when they went to bed, but they must have forgotten to do that tonight. I picked it up. Barry watched me with wide eyes. 

I grabbed his arm and dragged him between two wagons and into the darkness beyond. The others had snuck away in the same manner and we encountered them just a small distance from the camp.

“We need to cover as much ground as possible tonight,” Oliver said in a whisper. “No unnecessary talking.”

We set off at a jog, in among the trees. There was just enough moonlight to see by, to avoid crashing straight into a tree trunk, but it was still treacherous. Barry was running next to me.

“What’s happening?” he whispered. I could hear the fear in his voice.

“We’re going someplace else. You have to be quiet.”

I didn’t know if it was because he was too scared, or because he had such blind faith in me, but he didn’t say anything else. Either option made me feel pretty bad. 

We ran throughout most of the night, or walked when the ground was too uneven, or we had to catch our breaths. We were far enough away that our voices wouldn’t carry to the campsite, but we couldn’t be sure we hadn’t been seen. People might be following, so we stayed silent. 

Dawn rose, pale and slow. We stopped and listened. I didn’t hear anything, no voices, no footfalls. 

“Let’s go,” Clark said. “We don’t stop until we have to.”

We pressed on. Barry kept looking at me and I looked back. 

“I’ll explain later,” I said. 

At long last we stopped. Neither of us had the energy to go on. The sound of panting breaths filled the air. Oliver’s wife leaned forward with his hands on his knees. John was rubbing at what was probably a stitch in his side. I tried to catch my breath. I had gotten leaner, non stop walking for weeks would do that, but I was not built for long distance running. 

“How far you do think that is?” Oliver said, sounding breathless, and gesturing in the direction which we had come from.

“They will most likely have given up and rolled on by now,” John said. 

“We should find a spot to make camp,” I said, “somewhere with a good vantage point, just to be on the safe side.”

The others nodded. We made our way up a small hill. From there we were sheltered from view, but would still be able to see anyone coming after us. Both John and Oliver’s wife had been toting luggage. We didn’t light a fire, but Oliver handed out dried meat and boiled potatoes from a burlap sack in equal shares to the ‘men’. Then everyone, including me, shared with their wives. Clark was the only one who didn’t have a wife and he returned some of his share.

“It’s yours,” Oliver said.

“Better to save it.”

“I’m gonna get us another deer.” Oliver smiled.

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Clark said, smiling back.

We ate in silence. Barry’s eyes kept darting between me and the others and the ground. When we had finished eating I jerked my head at him, to indicate that he should follow me.

We walked far enough so that we were out of earshot from the camp.

“Why did I just run for… I don’t know, forever?” he said.

“We’re going to another town.”

“Why?”

“Someplace we don’t have to work for free. I would have talked to you about it, but I didn’t get a chance.”

He was quiet for a second.

“That’s not cool,” he said. 

“I know. But it is what it is.”

He frowned.

“How can you make a decision like that, without asking me?”

I hadn’t seen him upset before. I had seen him scared, but not angry. I was pretty sure this was his version of angry.

“I had to,” I said.

“What about Nereus and Anita?”

“What about them?”

“You stole their tinderbox!”

For fuck’s sake…

“I’m a criminal. You’re on an island with criminals.”

What part of that didn’t he understand?

“What if I don’t want to go to this other town?” 

“Feel free to go back and get raped. I’m not stopping you.”

I regretted that the second I said it, because of the look he got on his face. He looked as if I had slapped him. 

Fuck. 

“Look,” I said. “I’m sorry. I had to make a decision fast and I think this is our best option.”

I hoped this was our best option. 

“Okay,” he said.

I wasn’t very surprised he acquiesced so quickly, but it didn’t make me feel any better. 

“Listen,” I said, “you don’t owe me anything.”

He smiled a small mirthless smile.

“Yes, I do,” he said. “It’s just that you’re not interested in the currency I’m suppose to repay you with.”

I looked at him. This was so fucked up. 

“You’re not a damn whore,” I said. “You’re my buddy.”

He glanced at me. 

It was true. I cared about him.

“The only one I got,” I said.

We looked at each other in silence for a few seconds. 

“And them?” He nodded his head in the direction of the camp.

“A means to an end,” I said. 

“Just like Nereus and Anita?”

That was the grim truth. I nodded. He met my gaze and then he nodded a little. 

When we got back to camp, Oliver chuckled and said in an almost sing-song kind of voice:

“Someone just got their cock sucked.”

I didn’t reply. 

“Clark’s gonna take first watch,” Oliver said. “You’re up next.”

I nodded. I spread the first blanket on the ground. I didn’t trust these guys, so it was a good thing I didn’t really have anything worth stealing. I had kept my money out of sight. Then a thought hit me. Barry. In these guys’ mind, he might be considered a commodity worth stealing.

“No, behind me,” I said when Barry made a move to lie down in front of me. I kept my voice down, so only he would hear me. “Back to back.”

He looked like he didn’t understand, but he did as I said. There was a rock wall right next to us. I wanted him behind me, in case they came for him, and I wanted us back to back so these guys wouldn’t see him spooning me. 

I woke up before Clark had a chance to shake my shoulder. I saw his boots approach and sat up. I could vaguely make out his features in the moonlight sifting through the foliage above. He smiled a little.

“Three hours,” he said in a hushed voice. “Have you got a watch?”

I shook my head and he handed me a wristwatch. It was a cheap, plastic thing. His presumably. I got up. He went over to his own blanket and I cast a glance at Barry. He was asleep. Everyone was asleep. 

I made my way over to the lookout point. I looked at the watch, it was too dark to see the time. I fiddled with it and found a button that made the face light up. I put it in my pocket and stared out into the darkness. 

It was unlikely Nereus, or any of the other wagon owners, would come after us. Doing so would cost them in both time and effort, not to mention the potential cost of physical injury as well, if they caught up with us. But they might think it worth the risk. They had lost out on their payment and there was the issue of pride to consider as well. 

I could hear snoring behind me. Barry didn’t snore. He mumbled a little in his sleep sometimes. He’d told me I snored, though. I wondered if he had been telling the truth. Maybe I snored a little, but it couldn’t be that bad? I’d never gotten any complaints before. I thought for a minute about the people who’d been in the position to tell me, but then I pushed those thoughts away.


	8. Chapter 8

We made our way through the woods without seeing any other people. The forest stretched on for miles and miles. I learned a few things about the others in our group, about the ‘men’ at least. I told Barry not to tell the other women anything about himself. We were vulnerable out here, in a different way than we had with the caravan, and we had to be careful. 

Oliver was a pretty cheerful guy, for someone who was doing life in prison. He had a long list of annoying personality traits, though. For one thing, not only was he very fond of having sex in too close proximity to where other people were trying to eat or sleep and whatnot, but he was also fond of talking about it. 

“Guess what my wife is in for?” he said one evening when we had made camp. “Sucking cock!” He laughed. “Can you imagine her fucking luck, getting sent here, where that’s a skill that’s appreciated instead of illegal!”

He laughed some more. John smiled, as if he found it funny, but had heard it before. I took notice of the fact that Clark didn’t laugh. I shot a glance over at where the women were preparing dinner, Barry among them. They were just a few feet away, they could hear us, Oliver’s poor fucking wife could hear us.

“You guys don’t have any sense of humor,” Oliver said when his joke failed to elicit the response he had been hoping for. 

“Maybe that’s because you tell the same joke over and over,” John said.

“These two haven’t heard it.” Oliver gestured at me and Clark with a small twig he had in his hand.

“It is ironic,” Clark said, nodding a little. The man had some diplomacy skills.

But Oliver made a disgusted sound. “Here I am, trying to lighten up the mood and none of you jackasses appreciate it.” He threw the twig away.

“You wanna hear a joke?” I said.

He looked at me and nodded.

I told a joke. It was a filthy fucking joke, but unlike his it was actually funny. I thought he might appreciate it, and he did. He laughed. As did the other two. 

“You,” he said, smiling, and picked up another twig and pointed with it at me, “you’re not as neanderthal as you look.”

We walked all day, every day, so that was nothing new, but the landscape was different. Since we didn’t have any wagons, we didn’t need to worry as much about finding a passable route. Oliver had a map. Nereus had had a map too, but unlike Nereus, Oliver didn’t mind showing his to the rest of us. I memorized as much as I could, but if I was going to move around on the island in the future, I would have to acquire my own copy. 

We were about a week away from our destination when we ran into other people. It was a group of five, all of them wearing pants and looking like they had been sleeping rough for a while. We had spotted them, but they had spotted us too. Oliver already had an arrow nocked and pointed at them, but they had their own bowman, aiming at us. 

“Greetings,” one of them said. He was smiling, but there was no warmth of any kind in it. 

We stared at them. They stared at us. I saw knives and and axe, but no guns. I had seen a couple back in town, but not since then. Maybe some of the wagon owners had them, but if so they’d kept them out of sight.

“Look at those pretty girls,” the same guy said. He sucked his teeth. “You guys interested in trading?”

“No,” Oliver said. 

“You haven’t even heard my offer.”

“We’re not interested,” John said.

They were sizing us up, just as we were sizing them up. If push came to shove, we could take them. Oliver had his bow, but it wouldn’t be much use up close, he would only have time to fire that one arrow. Still, he knew how to fight, it was obvious from the way he moved and he had a whole bunch of scars as well, to prove he’d done it before. Both John and Clarke looked like they could handle themselves pretty well too. But it was far from a done deal, the opposing five looked more than capable.

I was positioned between the other group and Barry. I couldn’t turn my head to look at him, but I had a pretty good sense of his location relative to mine. I’d fight with the others, but if things started to look dark, I’d grab him and we’d make a run for it. 

“Alright,” the guy said. “Your loss. Guess we’ll just be on our way then.”

Most likely he had come to the same conclusion as I had - it would be far from a done deal. Neither party moved for a few seconds, then they started edging away, and we did too. Slowly, not turning our backs to each other. I pushed Barry in behind me. Oliver kept his arrow nocked and aimed at the retreating group. 

We repositioned ourselves like that, feet by slow feet, until finally there was enough distance between us that it no longer made sense to walk backwards. An arrow could still have hit its target, but they had just the one bow, same as us.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Clarke said.

We set off at a quick pace, looking over our shoulders, but they didn’t appear to be following. We covered a lot of ground that afternoon, before we made camp. Oliver was in his usual good mood.

“What the hell was that guy wearing on his head?” he said and laughed. “Was that a hat? Looked like a fucking dead cat.”

After we had eaten, Clarke walked up to me where I was keeping watch, a short distance away from the campfire.

“I saw what you did,” he said.

I stared out among the trees.

“I saw you push your wife behind you,” he said. 

I didn’t reply.

“It’s the little things,” he said after a beat. “You share your food fifty-fifty with her. She looks you in the eye when she talks to you.”

I wasn’t sure where he was going with this, not entirely, so I said nothing. 

“It would probably be in your best interest to give the impression of having complete mastery over her,” he said, “or at least give an appearance of taking advantage of her. If there’s one thing no one here tolerates, it’s a refractory wife. They think it makes them look weak.”

I shot him a glance, but I didn’t say anything. He thought he knew something, but he didn’t, not for certain, and I wanted to keep it that way. He didn’t have a wife and that was most likely for a reason, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know him. 

The hell of it all was that Barry wasn’t even fucking refractory. He was meek as a damn lamb. How fucking downtrodden did a woman have to be here? I felt sick with it all. I was sick and fucking tired of seeing and hearing Oliver forcing himself on his wife every night. I felt tainted by it. 

After we had eaten that evening I told Barry to come with me. We walked out of sight from the camp. Assuming Clarke’s advice was genuine, I guessed Oliver and John had also taken notice of how Barry and I acted, or Clarke wouldn’t have felt the need to tell me. 

“Come on,” I said to Barry. 

I glanced over my shoulder. I was beginning to feel paranoid, I could feel it, tendrils spreading inside my mind, like a disease. How much had they noticed? How much did they care? And what would they do if they thought I wasn’t man enough to control my wife?

I stepped behind a bolder. I took out my knife and Barry’s eyes went wide.

“Look,” I said in a hushed voice to him. “We’re just gonna stay here a little while.”

“Why?” He looked back in the direction we had come from.

“We’re just gonna give them the impression that we’re doing something.”

He glanced back among the trees and then at me.

“You want me to do something?”

“No!” Fuck, I hated this. “We just want them to think so. You have to seem more like the other wives.”

I looked at him, he looked at me. Then he got down on his knees. I shifted backwards, but the rock was behind me.

“In case someone is spying,” he said, glancing up at me.

Jesus Christ. 

He put a hand on my hip and then he mimicked giving me a blow job. 

There were some bushes growing nearby and unless someone walked right up to us, it would look as if he was actually blowing me. It was about the least erotic experience of my life and my cock was as flaccid in my pants as it would have been had I been gutting fish. I couldn’t look at him. This was so screwed up. Even though it was fake, I felt horrible for making him do this. I watched for movements among the trees. 

When we returned the others were all seated around the fire. Oliver smiled and made an expected, lewd comment, but I didn’t get the impression he’d seen anything. We went to bed soon after that. I couldn’t wait to get away from these people. I felt like I would do just about anything for a bit of privacy.


	9. Chapter 9

When we finally reached the town it was raining heavily. It had been raining since last night and I was soaked to the skin and cold as hell. The town looked depressing as hell too. It seemed to be about the same size as the town we had left, although it was hard to tell. The buildings were gray or brown structures that looked as if they had been there for quite some time. 

We split up as soon as we reached the first few houses, all of us going in different directions. Barry and I started making our way down a street that the rain had turned into mud, a couple of inches deep. 

The layout of the town seemed haphazard and there was no apparent main street. We passed a house that had a chicken coop attached to the side and another building that was missing its front door. Then we turned down another mudslicked street, but that turned out to be a dead end. We backtracked and found a narrow alley where we passed a tall pile of wood beneath an overhanging roof and, a little further down, a guy passed out on a similar, tiny back porch.

The rain and the fading light made it difficult to see very far ahead. There were lit up windows here and there, but no torches or anything on the outside of the buildings. At long last we came across a house that had a sign above the door that said ‘Tavern’. We went inside.

It was a simple room with unfinished wood walls, a number of tables and a long counter. It was bigger than the place where I had eaten, back in the other town, and it was pretty crowded too. The air was thick with the din of voices and it smelled like old booze, but it was warm, a fire crackled in a large fireplace, and I could smell food too.

I walked up to the bar. The bartender, a guy with graying blonde hair and beard, and a scar across the bridge of his nose, came over.

“How much for two meals and a room?”

“Well, that depends,” he said. “Do you want a room with or without a whore in it?”

“Without.”

“I see you brought your own.” His gaze flickered briefly to Barry, then he looked at me. “Women aren’t allowed in the bar, that’s a rule we have, but I can rent you a room and she can walk from the door to the staircase you see over there.”

“Fine. How much?”

He told me the price and I handed over the money. He gave me a key and then another guy showed up with two bowls of steaming hot food and two mugs of water. Barry and I took our meals upstairs. The room was simple, but it was a real room, in a real house. There was a bed and two chairs, and on a table by the small window was an old-fashioned bowl and water pitcher. 

We ate first, we were both starving, and then I eyed the bed. 

“I think I wanna turn in,” I said. 

Barry nodded. I shrugged out of my jacket, then I hesitated.

“I gotta get out of these wet clothes,” I said. 

“Yeah. Me too.”

Being naked had never been this damn complicated before. I had been in plenty of locker rooms, but I felt weird about it now, because I had a feeling he felt weird about it. 

I undressed quickly and spread my clothes on the furniture and the floor to dry. I squeezed what water I could from my hair and then I got into bed. 

It was the softest bed I had ever been in. I lay on my back and stared up at the ceiling. A real fucking pillow. 

“Wow,” Barry said. 

“Yeah.”

Neither of us said anything for a while. 

“Where do you think the others went?” he said then.

“Don’t care.”

It was quiet for a minute.

“Well, goodnight,” he said then.

“Goodnight.”

I was naked, in bed, with another guy, but I didn’t care. The door was locked and I was going to sleep, for hours and hours. The bed wasn’t very wide and I brushed against him when I turned onto my stomach. He felt cool and a little damp. 

I fell like a brick into unconsciousness. 

When I woke up, the room was awash in pale light falling through the window. I was on my side, facing the window. I had a solid morning boner. It felt pretty insisting, actually, and I wished I could have done something about. 

I glanced over my shoulder. Barry was asleep, his mouth open and his hair in his face. How soundly was he asleep? 

But he would wake up if I jerked off, right? 

I lay still for a moment. I hadn’t rubbed one out in ages. Normally, I had a pretty regular, nightly masturbation routine, unless it was interrupted because I had a girlfriend, or if I’d gotten lucky. But for the past few weeks, I hadn’t even felt like it. 

Fuck it. I wrapped my fingers around my hard on and then I got it done, as quickly and discreetly as possible. 

If someone would have told me, at some point in my past, that I would jerk off while another guy was sleeping behind me in the bed, I wouldn’t have believed them. It felt a bit wrong, honestly, sort of indecent. But damn good too.

When I was done I wiped myself off on the sheet. I lay still. Was he awake? I decided I didn’t want to know, so I didn’t turn around. 

I usually didn’t laze around in bed after I had woken up, but when you hadn’t seen a bed for weeks and weeks it was another matter. I drifted off to sleep again. 

I was awoken again by a knock on the door.

“You have to either vacate the room, or pay for another night.”

I recognized the voice of the bartender. I moved to nudge Barry, but he was already awake. I couldn’t help but to wonder how long he had been awake.

My clothes were still damp and cold and not very comfortable to put on. Maybe the rain had cleaned them up a bit though, that would definitely be an improvement. 

Outside it was still raining, but it had slowed to a drizzle. I looked in one direction and then the other. 

“Are you hungry?” Barry asked, letting me know, in a roundabout way, that he was hungry.

I smiled a little.

“Yeah, but I gotta see if I can find some work first.” I looked at him. “Can you make it a while? If I don't find anything, we might have to settle for eating once a day.”

I really hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He nodded. 

We set off. I tried to get a feel for the layout of the place, but there was no logic to it. It seemed as if the houses had simply been built where someone felt like building one, and where there was enough room to fit one in. The streets were narrow and winding.

I asked at every place that looked like it might be some type of business or shop if they needed help, but everyone said no. A blacksmith asked if I knew the job, which was the first hint of interest I had received. I would have lied if it meant getting hired, but he would have figured that out pretty soon, so there was no point. 

The pleasure of having slept in a real bed was beginning to wear off. I was soaked to the skin again and so was Barry. We were going to have to go back to sleeping rough if I couldn't find a job. Come winter that could mean death. I felt very aware of Barry’s presence. It had been my decision to come here. How long would the money I had last us?

Unlike the place where we had arrived, this town was located right by the water and we walked all the way down to the docks. I stared out across the dark, gray sea. Somewhere beyond that great mass of water lay the rest of the world. There was a sign halfway out on the pier, just like where we had gotten off the ship. Presumably it read ‘No prisoners allowed beyond this point while ships are docked. Transgressors will be fired upon.’ It seemed like a hundred years ago since I had read those words.

On a street not too far from the docks was a building that looked like a barn. A door stood open at one end and I could see two horses through the doorway. I didn't know much about horses, but I had helped Nereus take care of his. If this was a stable or something, they might need a hand.

I had no more than walked up to the doorway when a man showed up from somewhere inside the depth of the building.

“What do you want?”

His voice was harsh. He was a bit older, with a shaved head and a thick gray beard and he glared at me with a scowl on his face.

“Are you hiring?”

He stopped on the threshold and frowned at me. The doorstep being a few inches from the ground put him at eye-level with me.

“Who are you?” he said. 

“I just got into town. I'm looking for a job.”

He gazed at me for a moment. 

“Where did you come from?” he asked then.

He sounded slightly less pissed off now. 

“East coast.”

“Worked for Bane?”

“No.”

I’d heard the name Bane, back in the other town, but I had no idea who he was, or what he did. 

The man pulled a hand over his beard, kept looking at me.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Thirty-six.”

“And what are you in for?”

This was a job interview. I felt a flicker of hope. 

“Murder.”

Just like Nereus, he didn't move a muscle at that. It was not like a job interview anywhere else, that was for damn sure. 

“And you're a provider,” he said.

His gaze barely left my face, but he glanced ever so slightly to my right. Barry was loitering slightly behind my right shoulder.

“Is that a problem?” I said.

“No.” He stroked his beard again. “I might be looking to hire someone, but I need to be able to trust him.”

I said nothing. Saying ‘You can trust me’ was pointless, especially here. 

“I run a business,” he said after another beat, “and as long as you don't screw with me, I won't screw with you. But if you rip me off, I will kill you and then I'll let my men have their way with your pretty wife, before I slit her throat. Are we clear?”

I met his gaze. Then I nodded.

“Good.” He jerked his head. “Come on in.”

I threw a glance at Barry, to make sure he followed. His face was pale. Threats to your life was pretty par for the course when you were getting into business with criminals, but I couldn’t explain that to him right now. 

“Your wife can wait here with the horses.”

I could tell Barry did not want to do that. Apparently so could the old guy, because he chuckled and said:

“Doesn't like to be out of your sight, does she? Alright, she can come.”

The horse boxes were to the left of the door and directly to the right was a wall, but up ahead was another doorway. When we stepped through it, it became apparent this wasn't a stable.

There were stills in there, several of them and pretty big too. Bigger than I had seen before. The old guy was making moonshine.

“Know anything about whiskey?” the guy said.

“Know how to drink it.”

He chuckled a little.

“Your job would be to sell it and guard it. We deliver to a number of places around this area, and some out west, but I need a guy locally, here in town.”

I nodded. That suited me pretty damn perfect. 

If he ran booze on this scale, he was likely the boss of some type of crew. He had to be able to not only distribute his product, but defend his interests as well. When I came to the island I figured I didn’t want to join a gang, but things had changed. Life here was fucking hard. 

I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and raised my gaze. Up on what had probably served as a hayloft once was a man, about my age, maybe a little older, short dark hair and a scruffy goatee.

“That's Carlos,” the old guy said.

Carlos raised a hand in greeting and I nodded back at him.

“What's your name?” the old guy asked me.

“Arthur.”

“Atlan.”

Mentally I did a double take. My mom's name had been Atlanna, after some ancient relative who had been called Atlan. It was not a common name and it felt strange to hear it now.

I shook his hand.

“I'll pay you in either money, wares, or food of comparable value. Cash can be hard to come by, but most people barter anyway so it's not a big problem.”

I nodded.

“Do you wanna try it?” He nodded in the direction of the stills.

“Sure.”

He went over to a crate and took out a bottle, then fetched a glass from a bench by the wall. He poured a measure of clear liquid into the glass and handed it to me.

“Slàinte,” he said.

It was pretty good. But then again, I had probably forgotten what good whiskey tasted like. It was strong and burned nicely down my throat. 

“Maybe the wife wants a drink too?” Atlan said.

I remembered what Barry had told me about blacking out.

“No,” I said.

Atlan chuckled.

“You can start right away, if you want,” he said. “Or tomorrow, that's up to you.”

“I gotta find a place to stay. Do you know anything that's available?”

He rubbed his beard. “Well, there's usually a vacant place or two, and someone who knows this town well usually keeps track of them…”

“Stop dicking him around, old man.”

I looked up at Carlos.

“Alright, I know a place,” Atlan said. “You head up this street, then you turn left…”

He described what sounded like a really long and winding route to me. It was too fucking complicated to remember.

I frowned a little. “Come again?”

“No worries,” Carlos said from the hayloft, “the wife was listening.”

He nodded down at us and I turned around and looked at Barry. He could remember all that? I raised my eyebrows and he nodded. I was impressed.

I cast a glance up at Carlos. He was an observant guy. I had to keep that in mind. He raised his hand in a kind of goodbye wave.

“See you,” he said and then he disappeared from view.

I looked at Atlan. I could tell from the look in his eyes that he was still sizing me up. I was going to have to prove my worth.

“I’ll come back tomorrow morning then,” I said and handed him the glass.

He took it and nodded.


	10. Chapter 10

Barry stopped every now and then, practically mumbling to himself, and then he kept walking. I followed him.

“Sure you remember all that?” I asked.

“Yeah, I think so.”

Eventually we came to an alley between two buildings. A staircase led up to a second floor addition to the outside of the house on the right. It had a door and a window. Below it, behind the wooden stairs, was a small porch and another door in a wall set slightly further back. 

This had to be it. Atlan had said there would be an alley and a staircase. Then again this town was a fucking maze and there could be dozens of alleys and staircases. But the key was in the lock. 

It was just one room, that had been more or less obvious even from the outside, given the size. It was not connected to the building next door and there was a second window, facing the house on the other side. I had a look through it. There were no windows in the opposite wall. 

The floor was covered with dirt, but there was a wood-burning stove in one corner and even a few pieces of furniture. A bed, although it had neither mattress nor bedclothes, a small cupboard, a chair and a metal tub, about the size of a child’s bathtub. 

“There’s a bucket in here,” Barry said as he opened the cupboard.

He took out an old bucket made of metal. 

It wasn’t much but it was a hell of a lot more than what we’d had. 

“That guy, Atlan…” Barry said. 

“He doesn’t know me, he doesn’t trust me. He won’t come after you, or me, unless I try to steal from him.”

“Like you stole from Nereus…”

I sighed. “That was different.”

“How was that different?”

There was a difference, but it was hard to explain.

“He was a farmer and we were getting the hell out of there. This is a job and I’m gonna do it and we’re not gonna get in any trouble.”

He was quiet.

“What?” I said.

He pulled his shoulders up a little. “It’s just… Do you know what you’re doing?”

I looked at him for a second and then I sighed.

“No, Barry, I don’t. I’m trying to figure it out as I go along. That’s the best I can do.”

He nodded a little. 

“But you don’t need to worry about Atlan,” I said. “Like he said, he’s running a business.”

It was quiet for another moment.

“Let’s go get something to eat,” I said then.

We were back to sleeping on the blankets that night, but a fire was crackling in the stove and the door was locked, so it was an improvement from life on the road. Tomorrow I would see about getting a mattress for the bed. There were plenty of things we needed, but not sleeping on the floor was at the top of my list.

“Can we spoon?” Barry said all of a sudden. There was a trace of uncertainty in his voice.

The floor was a bit chilly, not to mention hard, but we were right next to the stove and it wasn’t that cold. 

What was he asking, really? Maybe he was scared. Maybe he felt lonely. Did it matter?

I rolled over onto my side and he shuffled close, until his back was pressed against my chest and his ass was against my crotch. I hugged him close, like I had when we huddled for warmth. The shape and weight of him was familiar by now, not as strange as it had once been.

“Will you ask around about my dad?” Barry said.

“Yeah.”

The next morning I headed back to the barn. The door wasn’t open this time, but it wasn’t locked so I went inside. I walked past the horse boxes and into the big room with the stills.

“Hello?”

Carlos appeared up on the hayloft. There was a steep staircase and he made his way down it.

“I gotta take a shit, man. Can you feed the horses?”

He half jogged over to another door. I went back to the stable. There was sack of horse feed by the wall and I distributed some to each horse, nice and even, the same amount to both of them. 

One of them was a mottled white and brown color. He, or she, was a nice looking horse. His eyes were calmy regarding me. 

“Hey there, buddy.”

I stroked his muzzle. He didn’t try to bite me so maybe he liked me. It was soft like velvet. 

I headed back to the main room and soon Carlos returned. 

“That feels much better,” he said.

He looked at me.

“I’m gonna show you the ropes,” he said. “We’re gonna start by making some deliveries. You’re one big, mean-looking motherfucker, so that’s already covered.”

He wasn’t big, but he possessed a quiet sort of authority. Not the kind of guy you wanted to fuck with, for all his friendly demeanor right now. I could imagine he’d knife you in the back, in the dark, when you least expected it. 

“Some practicalities first,” he said. “Follow me.”

I followed him up the stairs. The hayloft held some crates, a couch that looked as if it was dying and a desk. Carlos sat down behind the desk. There were no other chairs so I remained standing. 

“Alright, first you’re gonna need this.” 

He handed me a small notebook with a short pencil attached to it by a string.

“This here is the big book.” He put his palms on a large ledger on the desk. “That there is the little book. You write down every transaction and then we transfer it to the big book. You’re gonna go with me today, so I’ll write everything down and you’ll see how it’s done.”

“Alright.”

I put the notebook in my pocket. 

“Do you need reading glasses?”

He opened a drawer. There was a pile of spectacles in it. 

I shook my head. That was a lie. I’d had a prescription since I was a kid, but as a teenager I didn’t want to be caught dead wearing glasses and the aversion had stuck with me. I knew it was stupid and my ex used to tease me about it. She had seen me in glasses, I’d worn them at home, and she said they made me look smarter. 

“Okay,” Carlos said. “Since we can’t text each other here, we need to be able to keep track of time. If we’re gonna meet up at some specific place at some specific time, so…” He opened another drawer. “Here you go.”

He handed me a wristwatch. It was old and battered, but it worked.

“Last thing,” he said and placed an alarm clock on the desktop.

The watch was analog so it didn’t have an alarm function. Carlos fiddled with the alarm clock, it was the traditional wind-up kind, and then the clock rang. The sound echoed in the big space.

He put two other alarm clocks, similar to the first, on the desktop and made both of them ring in turn as well. It was weird.

“I don’t even know, man,” he said. “Pick anyone you like.”

I wasn’t sure if he was fucking with me, or if he genuinely wanted to see which clock had the best sound. I picked one. There was some difference in pitch, but it didn’t matter in the least to me.

“Alright,” he said and put the other two clocks away. “You can leave that here for now, can’t walk around town carrying a fucking alarm clock, besides you’re gonna have your hands full.”

We went back downstairs and then out the door he had used earlier. It led to a paved courtyard, fenced in on all sides by buildings.

“That there is the shithouse,” he said and pointed to a green door. On it someone had painted a cartoonish depiction of a hairy ass taking a dump.

The building across the courtyard had a big double-door with a padlocked chain on it. Carlos unlocked it and pulled the doors open. It was a warehouse. There were crates of booze, but plenty of other things as well, including a car. 

“Does that work?” I asked with a nod at the car.

“Theoretically. We haven’t been able to get hold of gas for years. We use horses and wagons. Although, here in town, we usually go on shank’s mare. Many of the streets are too narrow, it would take longer to go round with a big wagon.”

He handed me crates, I could hear the bottles inside clink, and I placed them in the courtyard, one by one. Then he closed the doors and pulled the chain back in place. He put the keys in his pocket.

“There’s a small wagon in there.” He pointed at another door. “Start loading these up. I gotta go lock up.”

We went out through the building that had held the small wagon and he locked the door behind us, then we set off up the street. The wagon was made of wood and it had a grip at the front so you could pull it after you. I was the new guy, so I dragged the wagon.

We delivered one crate to a man in a house not far from there. Carlos noted down the delivery in his notebook as well as the agreed price and when it was due to be paid. I could see why accepting the payment right away wasn’t all that practical, the guy was paying in a number of bulky items. That also explained the wide array of stuff in the warehouse.

“These are all regulars,” Carlos explained when we were en route to the next place. “A new customer needs to pay up front.”

We reached a small market place. I had been there yesterday, when I was looking for work. A number of shops surrounded a square of mud. Some of the shops had stalls out front. The mud squelched under our feet.

“Can you believe that in the summer, it gets so dusty here that they fetch water from the sea and pour it all over to get it to settle,” Carlos said.

Our next delivery was to a surly-looking, fat man who occupied a stall with textiles, fabrics and clothes. Through the open door to the house behind him I could see a number of women, working with old-fashioned tools like spinning wheels and looms. I could name those things because I had a book when I was a kid, about a boy who worked in the kitchen in some medieval castle and then he became a knight. 

“He has them taking turns, fucks one of them each night,” Carlos said when we left. 

I wasn’t surprised. I knew how this place worked by now. 

But seeing the fabrics had reminded me.

“Do you know where I could get hold of a mattress?” I said. 

“Cheapest way would be to buy some sheets, from that guy, then have your wife sew them together and fill it with straw.”

I wondered if Barry knew how to sew. I didn’t. But how hard could it be?

“We can stop on the way back,” Carlos said, “if you wanna buy some.”

“Yeah. And the best place to get straw?”

“Well… what the hell, you can take some of ours, I’ll sell it to you cheap. You need to keep your back strong for this work!”

He laughed and I smiled.

“Appreciate it.”

We dropped off the last crate and then we went back to the stall and the fat guy. I bought some sheets as well as needle and thread, and then we headed back to the distillery. We worked most of the day doing the same thing, making deliveries. By the time my shift was over another guy showed up. He introduced himself as William. He had a rifle. I assumed he was the night guard.

Carlos led me to one of the other buildings that surrounded the courtyard and we stuffed straw into big burlap sacks. Then he helped me get them back to the apartment, or whatever the hell it you might call it. They weren’t all that heavy, but they were bulky.

“I’m going in that direction anyway,” he said, but I had a feeling he would have helped me out anyway. 

“Do you know a guy called Henry Allen?” I asked him as we walked.

“Henry Allen… No, I don’t think I do. He’s here in town?”

He could be anywhere, if he was even still alive.

“Could be,” I replied.

“The name doesn’t ring any bells. If I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”

We reached the alley.

“Thanks, man,” I said and shook Carlos’ hand. 

“De nada. See you tomorrow, then it’s back to class.”

He raised his hand in a kind of salute and then he turned and walked away. I carried the sacks and the sheets up the stairs, to the small landing outside the front door. Barry opened it and I guessed he had been looking out the window.

“What’s all this?” he asked.

“We’re gonna make a mattress.”

He smiled. “Awesome.”

I couldn't help but to smile back.


	11. Chapter 11

I bought a few necessities, like a pot to cook in, foodstuffs, candles, and I paid for it in cash. I had to buy firewood as well. Theoretically I could just take whatever I wanted from the woods right outside town, the land didn’t belong to anyone, but I had neither the tools nor the know-how to fell a tree. Collecting branches and twigs was time consuming, time I didn’t have. Watching my savings dwindle gave me an almost panicky feeling. 

But then it was payday. Atlan said I could take what I wanted from the warehouse.

“I’ll be honest with you,” I said, “I’m not entirely sure of the worth of this stuff yet.”

“I’ll keep tally for you,” he said. “If you want things to trade with, I recommend metalwork of any kind, including nails.”

I was toting a burlap sack when I left that day. I took the route via the market place. There were other shops as well, scattered around the city, people who made stuff in their homes and traded them. I bartered some of the things I’d taken from the warehouse and then I went home.

Barry was sitting on the chair, which he had placed by the window facing the street, although only a very small strip of it was visible from there. 

“Hi,” I said. 

“Hi.” He eyed the sack. “More stuff?”

“Yeah, my wages, I traded some of it for other stuff.”

I handed him the sack. 

He was bored. He didn’t go out much, only to the well, which was just a stone’s throw away. I was out and about, I saw people. Barry didn’t do any of that. He couldn’t go to the market, because women weren’t allowed to handle money or barter. He wasn’t allowed in bars and he could only talk to other women, but few of them were out on their own without their husbands. 

I pulled my jacket off. Barry sorted through the things in the sack. 

“Have you heard anything about my dad?” he asked.

“No, sorry.”

I had asked a bunch of people if they knew a Henry Allen, but no one had said they did. 

I looked at Barry. He shouldn’t even be here. 

“Wanna eat and then we can go out?” I said.

He looked up from the sack.

“Out where?”

I shrugged. “Just out.”

“Okay.”

It was full dark by the time we headed out, but it wasn’t very late. There were still plenty of people out and about and lights from the windows lit up the streets. 

At least he’d get a bit of fresh air, although fresh was a relative word since the whole town smelled pretty bad, and he’d see some people. It was better than nothing, even if the only one he could talk to was me, which couldn’t be much fun. But I didn’t know what else to do.

“We need a change of clothes,” I said, “but I’d like to hang on to the cash I’ve got left, so I was thinking we could wait until the next payday?”

“Sounds smart.”

We had no destination so we walked at a leisurely pace. I knew my way around now. When we walked past the tavern, where we had stayed our first night here, a thought occurred to me.

I turned to Barry.

“Wait here a moment,” I said.

“What? Why?”

“I’ll just be a minute.”

He threw a look around and then he stepped closer to the wall. 

“Okay?” I asked.

He nodded.

I went inside. There were a few different bars in town, I had made deliveries to them, but this was the biggest one. It was also the one easiest to stumble upon if you came new to town, like we had done. I was annoyed with myself for not thinking of it sooner. Bartenders always knew a lot of things.

I walked up to the bar. The bartender was the same guy as last time we were here, maybe he was the owner. I hadn’t seen him since then, because I hadn’t made any deliveries to this place. I knew Atlan had, though, because I had helped him load the crates onto the wagon.

“Hello there,” the bartender said.

“Hi. I was wondering if you know a guy named Henry Allen?”

He thought for a few seconds. I half-expected him to ask how much that information was worth to me, but then he said:

“There is a trapper by that name.”

A jolt shot through me. 

“He’s been here a few times,” the bartender said.

“Do you know if he’s in town now?” I asked.

“Not to my knowledge. I have not seen him for some time.”

“If he comes back here, will you let him know Arthur Curry is looking for him?”

All of a sudden it seemed to occur to the guy that he had no reason to be so helpful and judging by the look on his face he was about to argue that it might be very troublesome for him to deliver that message.

“He can find me at the distillery,” I said. “Atlan’s place.”

His expression changed.

“Of course,” he said. “I will let him know.”

I turned back towards the door.

I hadn’t thought we’d have a shot in hell at finding Barry’s dad. And we still hadn’t. It might not be him, it was not such an uncommon name, and there was no guarantee the guy would ever show up here again. But Barry would get his hopes up all the same.

He pushed off from the wall when I came back outside. He looked a little questioningly at me.

“Work,” I said. 

The hay mattress was much more comfortable than I would have thought. Then again, after weeks of sleeping on the ground anything was softer. It was warmer too, not being directly on the floor, and with both blankets over us. Neither of us had slept in the nude again though, we kept our underwear on.

“It would have been nice if I could have gotten a job too,” Barry said next to me.

“Yeah.”

“I’m not complaining.”

I turned my head and looked at him.

“You can complain,” I said. I smiled a little. “There’s a lot of stuff to complain about.”

He smiled back. 

“I do miss pizza,” he said. 

I smiled. “No shit?” He’d only said that about a million times. 

“What do you miss?” he asked.

My smile faded. 

I didn’t want to think about it. 

“Lots of things,” I said.

He met my gaze. 

“Like what?”

Now I was thinking about it. Fuck.

“My dad,” I said. “There’s other stuff too, but mostly him.”

“Did you have a girlfriend?”

“No.”

I’d had one, but she had dumped me by the time I was sent away. She had dumped me once before, actually. I missed her too.

It was quiet for a moment and then Barry lifted a hand and traced the scar that cut through my left eyebrow. Then he found its twin, beneath my eye and on my cheekbone. I didn’t move. 

“What did you do there?” he asked.

“Bar fight. A broken bottle.”

I felt funny. His touch was so gentle and no one had touched me like that in a long time.

He let his hand fall. 

“It must have hurt,” he said.

I nodded a little.

It was probably weird as hell, but I kind of wished he’d do it again.


	12. Chapter 12

Each day was a little colder than the one before. It was pretty warm in our room, but the outhouse below didn’t have a heat source. Come winter I would freeze my fucking balls off in there. 

I went back up the stairs. It was early and it was quiet all around, like the whole town was asleep.

I opened the door and saw Barry, not asleep, but jerking off.

“Oh fuck…” I said. I made a face and stepped back, closed the door again.

I crossed my arms to warm my hands in the crooks of my elbows. You couldn’t blame a guy for wanting to get off. But he was home alone all day. I was having a much harder time finding a time and a place to rub one out. 

The door was nudged open. I went back inside. He wouldn’t meet my gaze.

I vaguely wondered again if he had been awake, that morning in the room above the tavern. I hadn’t done that again.

I was cold so I pulled my sweater on. 

Barry was going about his business, putting the pot on the stove, pouring water in it, all the while not looking in my direction. You’d think I’d caught him fucking a sheep or something.

I watched him for a moment.

“Was it a good one?” I said then.

He shot me a glance. Jesus Christ, the look on his face. I laughed. 

He started smiling, but grimaced at the same time, and put a hand over his eyes.

We were up in each other’s space all the time, we slept in the same bed for Christ’s sake. Privacy was hard to come by.

“Maybe we need a jerk off schedule,” I said.

“No, no, that’s not necessary.”

“Actually… I’m never home alone.”

I raised my eyebrows a little and made a face. Everyone had needs.

“Right,” he said. “I could go outside?”

I had a mental image of him waiting on the landing while I jerked off. I’d never had to leave a sample at a hospital, nor had I donated to a sperm bank, but I could imagine it might feel a bit similar. 

“Yeah, well, I’ll let you know. Can we have breakfast now?”

I worked at the distillery all morning, loading crates onto wagons that were set to make deliveries outside of town. 

I heard someone say my name, and then William’s voice said: 

“Yeah, he’s over there. The big guy.”

I turned around and felt as if my stomach dropped a foot. The man approaching me couldn’t be anybody but Barry’s dad. 

Barry looked a lot like him. This guy was a little shorter and his face was more weather-beaten. Barry’s face was anything but; I still shaved him, because we didn’t have a mirror, but I only had to do that about twice a week, if that. This man had a scruffy beard, with a bit of gray in it, but his hair was still mostly dark, the same, almost black color as Barry’s. 

“Are you Arthur Curry?” he asked.

I nodded. 

“I heard you were looking for me. Henry Allen.”

He was looking at me like he was wondering what the hell I wanted with him. That was understandable, a perfect stranger asking around for you, you were bound to be a bit confused, as well as suspicious.

I hadn’t planned this far ahead and I realized now that was a mistake. I didn’t know what the hell to say.

“There’s someone here to see you,” I said.

That only made him look more confused.

“Who?”

I didn’t want to be the one to tell him. How the fuck was I going to break it to him that his son was here? That his kid had earned himself a life sentence, by claiming responsibility for something he didn’t even do, just to find him?

So I did the cowardly thing, and lied my ass off. 

“Some old friend of yours,” I said. “I only asked around on his behalf because, you know, I move around town a lot. But I know where he lives, I could take you.”

Henry looked, understandably, not entirely convinced. Shit.

“Hey, Atlan,” I said and turned around. “We’re about done here right? I need to take care of something. Alright if I come back in a little while?”

Atlan nodded and raised his hand at me. I turned back to Henry. He looked at Atlan, he looked at me. 

Atlan was well-known. He didn’t know Henry Allen, I had asked him, but chances were Henry knew who he was. I’d just earned myself some credibility by association. 

“Alright,” Henry said.

We started walking.

“What’s his name?” he said.

Fuck. I was going to have to dig myself deeper, and deeper, until I died of cowardice. It made me feel nauseous.

“Said his name was Orm, I don’t know.”

That was my little brother’s name. For some fucked up reason, that was the only name that popped up in my head.

Henry followed me to our street, but he stopped in his tracks when I moved to turn into the alley.

“No, no,” he said. “I don’t know you. And don’t know anyone named Orm. I’m not following you into some alley. What the hell is this?”

“Fine, wait here. I’ll go get him.”

I went into the alley, and up the stairs, and I felt something that could only be described as dread, sitting like a lump in my stomach. I should be happy for Barry’s sake, we’d found his dad, something I didn’t even think possible, and I was. But there was no way this was going to go down the way Barry had imagined it would.

Barry was not sitting by the window, but instead he was crouched in front of the cupboard. He turned his head when I opened the door.

“Hey, um…” I looked at him. “I think I’ve found your dad.”

He stood up so quickly he nearly toppled over.

“Really?”

His expression was one of awe and hope and excitement.

“Yeah, you should come take a look, I can’t be sure it’s him.”

I was pretty sure. But it could be just some guy who looked a lot like him, and shared his name.

Barry was over by the door like a bolt of lightning. I led the way down the stairs and out to the street.

Henry was still standing there, just around the corner. For a split second he looked at Barry without any kind of recognition on his face, like this was just some guy he had no idea who he was. But then his expression changed. He stared, in shock. His mouth opened but no sound came out.

“Dad?”

“Barry…” Henry’s voice was breathless.

Then Barry threw his arms around his neck. They hugged, long and hard. I couldn’t see Barry’s face, but I could see Henry’s. He was crying. 

“My God… Barry… What are you doing here?”

He finally let go and held Barry by his shoulders and looked at him like he couldn’t believe his eyes. 

“It’s, um… kind of a long story,” Barry said. 

Not that long. I could imagine Henry’s reaction when he heard it. 

“Barry, I can’t believe it…” 

Henry seemed to take in then, for the first time, what Barry was wearing. He stared for a second at the dress and then his gaze went to me. 

I could see it in his eyes, plain as day, the unadulterated loathing for what I had done to his son, or what he thought I had done to his son. I didn’t do the things he thought I did, but I felt bad all the same. 

But he had been here a long time, he knew the rules on the island, and even though it must have taken a great deal of effort, he bit back his rage.

“I’ll pay you,” he said. “Whatever it takes.”

Barry turned his head too. Judging by the look on his face, he was so overwhelmed he didn’t really take in what Henry was saying, or what he meant by it.

“Dad, this is Arthur. He’s helped me since I got here.”

That wasn’t technically true, I had told him to fuck off at first, but it didn’t matter, Henry didn’t believe a word of it anyway.

“What do you want?” Henry said through gritted teeth. “Name it.”

I shook my head a little. “Nothing. Barry can go with you.”

Finally, Barry caught on.

“No, Arthur’s my friend. I’m not… he’s not…”

He looked at me. 

“We’re friends,” I said.

Henry looked at Barry, he looked at me, then at Barry again. 

“I gotta get back to work,” I said. 

I didn’t know what else to say, so I left. I felt like shit. 

I made some deliveries and then I helped Atlan pour whiskey into jars. I just got on with the work, there was nothing else to do, but inside I felt all cut up. 

At the end of my shift I walked home. I felt like dragging my feet. I was half-expecting Barry to be gone and the thought made me feel empty inside.

But when I got home, they were both still there. Barry was sitting on the edge of the bed and Henry on the chair, facing him. 

“Hi,” I said.

Barry looked like he had been crying. 

“Hi,” he said.

Henry said nothing, just gave a small nod. 

I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I just put my hands in my jean pockets. 

“You can take whatever stuff you want,” I said then. “Whatever you need.”

Barry looked at me. It was fucking heartbreaking to see him so sad. 

“I don’t…” Henry said and then he cleared his throat. “I don’t have a fixed place to stay, and I’m away most of the time, so we figured it’s probably best if Barry stays here...”

His reluctance, or maybe it was guilt, was obvious.

I turned my gaze to Barry again.

“If that’s okay?” Barry said.

“Yeah, of course.”

He was staying? I shouldn’t feel glad that he was, he’d come here to find his dad, not my sorry ass, but I couldn’t help it, I felt fucking relieved. 

Barry looked at his dad again, and Henry smiled a little at him. I knew that smile. I’d seen it on my dad’s face a number of times. It was the smile of a parent trying to make his kid feel better.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Barry said and then he got up. 

He walked past me and out the door. It got quiet. Henry gazed straight ahead, at the bed, for a few seconds.

“Barry tells me you don’t demand anything in return for your protection,” he said then and there was a slight tension in his voice. “For that, you have my gratitude.”

He met my gaze.

“But if you lay a hand on him, in any way, I will kill you.”

His face was hard as flint. 

I could have gone into a lengthy explanation about how Barry was my friend and I would never hurt him, but Barry had in all likelihood already explained how he came to be my ‘wife’ and he had apparently told him he didn’t have to provide any sexual services. But he was Henry’s son and he was in a really vulnerable position that no parent wanted their kid to be in. Whatever I said, it would never be enough. 

So I just nodded. 

The door opened and Barry came back inside. 

“I have to get going,” Henry said. “We’re heading out again tomorrow, but I’ll come back before then.”

Barry nodded. He smiled, but it looked brittle. They hugged and then Henry left.

Barry sat down on the edge of the bed again. It was quiet.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

He nodded, but then his face crumpled. 

“He was so sad…”

His shoulders shook. 

What the hell did you expect? I thought, but I didn’t say it. Instead I sat down next to him. He sobbed.

“Hey…” I said. I put my arms around him and pulled him to me. 

He cried his fucking heart out, his face pressed against my shoulder, and I could feel his hands, clinging to my back. I leaned my head against his.

“It’ll be okay,” I said.

That was a lie, he was stuck here for the rest of his life, but I didn’t know what else to say.

After a long while his sobs subsided. For a minute we just sat there, holding each other, and then he straightened. There were tears on his cheeks and his hair was in his face. I pushed it back, behind his ears. 

He looked at me. I looked back. It felt as if the air in the room had grown unnaturally still. And then we both leaned forward. At first just an inch, but I could feel his breath, ghosting across my face. I tilted my head a little, we leaned forward another inch and our lips met. It was a gentle kiss. His lips were soft.

We parted, but our faces were still close. I could feel the rise and fall of my own chest and it felt as if there was something in there, something almost like a sense of vertigo. Barry’s eyes were dark, close to mine. He smiled a little and I couldn’t say if it was a happy smile or a sad smile, but he held my gaze, and then we kissed again.

There was no difference from kissing a woman. I had thought there would be, but it felt the same, except for the knowledge that he wasn’t a woman. I must have lost my mind. I couldn’t believe I was doing this, but it felt good. Kissing him. 

I cradled the back of his head in my hand, his hair was soft, and he wound his arms around my neck. Our lips moved together, his face right next to mine. I had my eyes closed, but I wasn’t fooling myself, I knew exactly what I was doing and it scared the hell out of me, but I didn’t want to stop. 

I could feel him smile against my mouth and I smiled back, because I felt good, he felt good, all of it felt good. I leaned my forehead against his. I stroked his hair. 

“You’re an incredibly good kisser,” he said at last, breaking the silence.

I smiled a little.

I wasn’t gay. I had never had an experimental phase and I could honestly say I had never been attracted to another man. I wasn’t sure I was now. But that had felt nice, much better than it should have. I didn’t know what to say.

“We should have some dinner,” he said then.

I nodded. 

Barry rose and walked over to the stove. I felt like I should probably say something, but I couldn’t think of a single thing. For all that he wore a dress, he wasn’t a girl. He didn’t look like a girl, except sometimes, a little bit, from the neck up. So why did I kiss him? 

We had dinner. Neither of us said much. It was kind of awkward. I sure felt awkward. We did the washing up. Then I went down to the outhouse, then he went down to the outhouse. There was not a whole lot to do in the almost bare room, so soon after that we went to bed.

I felt even more awkward lying there in bed, next to him. I wasn’t sure if I was freaking out too much, or not freaking out enough. The fire crackled. Through the window I could see the stars above the rooftop of the next building. I wasn’t gay, I knew I wasn’t. 

“Do you wanna kiss some more?” Barry said.

“Yeah.” I rolled over to face him.


	13. Chapter 13

I wasn’t there the next day when Henry came to visit Barry again, I was working. But we talked about it when I got back.

“He won’t be back for at least a month,” Barry said.

He looked unhappy. Not like he had yesterday, he wasn’t crying, but the sadness was there on his face and in the defeated slope of his shoulders.

I dropped my jacket onto the bed. 

“It’s his job,” I said. “He probably would have preferred to stay here, with you.”

Barry nodded. 

“It’s just… he’s…” He pulled his shoulders up. “He didn’t want me to come here.”

I lifted my hands in a gesture, because what the hell was I supposed to say? No one in their right mind would want their child to come here. We were doing okay now, but this wasn’t normal life. Barry would never have a normal life.

“Can you blame him?” I said.

He looked so forlorn. I hated it.

“Look,” I said. “He wanted something else for you. Hell, I want something else for you.”

He turned his gaze to me. 

“This is a shitty place,” I said.

But it wasn’t all bad. All day I’d had a hard time not thinking about last night. I’d put it out of my mind, more or less, but now that he standing right in front of me, I couldn’t think of anything else. 

I wanted to do it again. I felt insane for even thinking it.

“Do you regret… what we did last night?” he asked.

I did and I didn’t. But even aside from the fact that I was having problems coming to terms with the fact that I had kissed another guy, and liked it, there was another issue.

I sighed.

“I don’t want you doing something because you think you have to,” I said, “or because you think you owe me.”

“I promise you, I’m not.”

He said it firmly. In a way that made me feel even more conflicted. He was telling me, what - exactly? That he was attracted to me? I didn’t know how to feel about that.

But some part of me didn’t care, because after dinner, when Barry took my hand and then proceeded to slide his hand up to my neck, I didn’t need much convincing. We ended up on the bed, on top of the blankets, doing more of the same, kissing and holding each other. 

We were lying on our sides, facing each other. But even though this was new, for me at least, in some ways it wasn’t. I flicked my tongue against his lower lip and felt his mouth open a fraction. It didn’t feel wrong, it felt wonderful, and it filled my mind. I didn’t think, I slid my thigh between his legs and pulled him closer to me. He made a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a gasp. He gripped my back tighter and kissed me with more urgency. It felt fucking great. 

But there were some differences. I could feel it, the hard bulge, pressing against me. I knew he had a dick, obviously, I had seen it, but I was made rather more aware of it then. 

He felt aware of it too, apparently, because he pulled his mouth away from mine.

“Do you wanna stop?”

I thought about it. How far was I prepared to go? But I was half-hard too. It was like an itch, and I could scratch it, but it meant doing something that I was a bit afraid of doing.

I looked at him. 

“No,” I said.

At some point soon thereafter I rolled on top of him. He slipped his hands underneath my shirt and they felt great against my back. My hard-on was straining against my pants now and I ground my hips against his. That felt very fucking different from how it usually did. He pulled my shirt up, but paused.

“Can I take it off?” he asked. 

It was pretty sweet that he asked. I raised my arms so he could pull it over my head and then he slid his hands over my arms, over my shoulders and down my chest. He curled his fingers in my chest hair. He was looking at me like he thought I was fucking wonderful. That was a great feeling. Then he pulled his thumb over one nipple, firmly enough so the pad of his finger caught on it and I sucked in a breath. 

I didn’t know how to do this any other way than I had done it before. Maybe that wasn’t the right way, I didn’t know, but I did it anyway. I kissed his throat and flicked my tongue over the spot where his pulse was fluttering beneath his skin, then down to the hollow of his throat. There were buttons down the front of his dress and I undid them, kissing and licking as I went. His chest was flat, and I felt very aware of the strangeness of it, but he had nipples and I liked having mine touched, so I figured he might too.

There was a moment when I thought I couldn’t go through with it. We pulled apart to get rid of the rest of our clothes and when I looked back at him he was naked. And so obviously male. Was I really going to do this? Part of my hesitation was just plain uncertainty, based on the fact that I didn’t know what to do now. 

But then he made a kind of funny face, staring at my cock.

“Wow,” he said.

That made me crack up. 

“Oh, my God,” he said, a wide smile on his lips.

I felt some measure of juvenile pride, because who doesn’t like to have their cock admired? But most of all, I forgot I was having second thoughts, because he was fucking cute and I was aroused and I wanted it.

We kissed some more and then he slid his hand down my stomach. My abdomen tensed in anticipation. I closed my eyes when he wrapped his fingers around my erection; it felt so good. Someone else’s hand, not mine, his. But then I looked at him. He was looking at me. I knew I should reciprocate. I couldn’t let him go on touching me without touching him back. 

So I just did it. I wrapped my hand around him. His cock felt different from my own, that was a little bit weird, but not bad. We jerked each other off. The movement itself was familiar, although I couldn’t feel myself what my own hand was doing. But I could see the look on his face, his slightly parted lips and quick breaths. I was breathing fast too.

Then he made a sort strangled, almost keening noise and came. His come spilled over my hand, hot and slick. His hand stuttered on my cock for a moment and then he went on stroking me, but he’d lost momentum a little. I was keen to come too, after having watched him, so I wrapped my hand around his, tightening the grip, and then I fucked into our combined fists. Within moments, I’d already been pretty close, I felt the telltale pressure in my balls, as if they were struggling to rise, and then I came, grunting as I did so. 

I closed my eyes for a few seconds and caught my breath.

So... I’d had sex with him. Of a kind. 

I opened my eyes again and looked at him. He was a guy and I had no fucking clue how to feel about that, but that had felt good. 

I leaned closer and kissed him, like I would have if he had been a woman I’d just slept with. His mouth still felt nice.

“Are you freaking out?” he asked then.

I smiled a little. “A bit,” I admitted. 

I touched his cheek. Maybe I was fooling myself, a little bit, because up close, like this, he could have been a girl. But I’d held his cock in my hand.

I sighed a little. “I’m not gay,” I said. 

“I know.”

I felt slightly guilty now, but at the same time I didn’t regret it.

I smiled a little at him. “I liked it,” I said, truthfully. 

He smiled back. “Me too.”

***

As much as I liked him, and I did, I was certain none of this would ever had happened had we been anywhere else. I couldn’t imagine myself, in my old life back home, ever ending up in a similar situation. Hell, it probably wouldn’t even have happened if there had been TV here. 

But there were no distractions, nothing to do in the evenings in the all but empty room, and the boundaries of physical intimacy had already been blurred. Maybe that was why I crossed the line the way I did and we did it again the next night, and the night after that. 

And then he did something else. We were naked, in bed, and we were basically making out, when he kissed his way down my chest, then continued across my stomach. But I stopped him before he reached my cock.

“You don’t have to do that,” I said.

He looked up at me.

“But I want to.”

I met his gaze. What we’d done so far had been mutual, but I didn’t want to suck his cock. The thought of doing that felt gross. I had no problems jerking him off, but I knew I didn’t want his dick in my mouth.

I had to tell him. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise.

“I’m not comfortable doing that to you,” I said. 

It didn’t feel like a very nice thing to say. I didn’t mind going down on women, in fact I enjoyed it. But that was a very different thing. 

“Okay,” he said.

He brushed his knuckles along the underside of my erection. Just that light touch made it jerk.

“But I could still do it to you,” he said and there was something almost teasing about the way he said it.

I shook my head a little. “That’s not fair.”

He smiled. He had a great smile. 

“I want to do it,” he said. “But I won’t, not if you don’t feel okay with it.”

I hesitated. I was turned on and he was offering to blow me. Anyone would have hesitated. I should probably have said no, but I said yes.

And it was fucking amazing. The heat. The things he did, with his mouth, his tongue, slowly and teasing at first, then more, and more. The fleeting thought that he’d done this before, probably plenty of times, flittered through my mind, but then I thought of nothing but the sensation of it. He fondled my balls, I liked that, and he had his other hand wrapped around the base of my cock, stroking it rhythmically. 

I glanced down. His dark hair obscured most of his face, but I saw that he was jerking himself off with the hand that had previously gripped my balls. Jesus Christ...

I was panting. I felt a moan in the back of my throat. I had to make an effort to not move my hips and fuck into his mouth. 

Fucking hell, it felt good.

Oh, fuck… 

Fuck….. Oh, god….

I was about to come. I lifted my hand and found his shoulder. I nudged him. But he didn’t move. I felt something warm hit my leg and I barely registered what that was, because I couldn’t focus on anything other than how fucking close I was. And then I came in his mouth. 

It was an epic orgasm. Not only because it had been quite some time since I’d had that done to me, but because it was the best blow job of my life. 

He pulled his mouth off my cock. The air in the room felt chilly against my wet skin. He swallowed. I looked at him, caught my breath.

“Did you like it?” he asked.

I had to smile. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

He smiled. He lay down next to me then and I lifted my arm so he could put his head on my shoulder. We lay there for a while. 

“Did you come on my leg?” I said then.

I could feel the vibration of his chuckle.

“Yeah.”

“That’s fucking disgusting.”

He laughed. 

“You came down my throat,” he said. 

“Yeah, that’s worse.”

He was moving his fingers in small circles on my chest. I thought about that time in the woods, when he’d faked giving me a blow job. Then I thought of Oliver, making his wife choke on his cock. I’d heard Oliver tell him once, ‘Touch yourself, bitch’, and the guy had dutifully shoved his hand under his skirt, although it was fucking obvious the whole thing was pure fucking torture for him.

A black, oily feeling began to spread inside me, pushing away the happy contentment. I hadn’t just done that, had I?

“Barry…” I sat up, so I could see his face. 

He looked at me, a little questioningly.

I had trouble finding the words.

“Sure you didn’t mind any of that?” I said.

“Of course not. I was joking about the coming down my throat thing.”

I kept looking at him. A look of concern appeared on his face.

“You didn’t like it?” he said then.

“No, it was great, but…” God, I felt like I was losing my mind. “I feel like, maybe I made you…”

“No…” 

He closed the distance between us. He put his hand on my chest and then my cheek. 

“Why would you think you made me?” he said.

I didn’t know. I had never felt like this before. I didn’t even know what this feeling was. It felt like something was squeezing my lungs.

Barry caressed my cheek, then pushed my hair back. 

“I loved it,” he said. “It was great.”

I heard what he was saying, but I couldn’t stop feeling like I’d done something terrible. I could feel a stinging in my eyes and I had to turn away. Fucking hell. I pulled a hand over my face. I was making a fool out of myself and I struggled to get a grip.

I felt Barry’s hand on my back and then the warm weight of him when he leaned close. He stroked my shoulder, then kissed it. 

“I like having sex with you,” he said, “but if you don’t want to, we’ll stop. I won’t get mad, or anything.”

I stared at the wall. I wiped at my eyes. 

“Did I make you?” he asked.

I shook my head. I felt him begin to move away, though, so I reached over my shoulder and took his hand. We sat in silence for a while.

“I feel like I’m taking advantage of you,” I said then.

“Because I’m gay and you’re not?”

There was that, and then the rest of it, that he was my ‘wife’. 

I took a deep breath. He’d told me he wanted to. We were having sex with each other, I wasn’t raping him. 

I turned my head and looked at him. I’d cried in front of a girlfriend, once. Now I had lost my shit in front of him. Maybe that had some significance, I wasn’t sure. But it didn’t feel right, because he was counting on me to be strong, to protect him. 

He was biting his lip. I squeezed his hand a little.

“I just got worried…” I said.

He said nothing for a little while.

“I just wanted to make you feel good,” he said then.

“You did. I wanna make you feel good too.”

He smiled a little. “You do.”

I smiled a little too.

We lay down and I spooned him, like we had done in the beginning, but it was different now because we were naked. I kissed his hair. He held my hand against his chest. 

“Can I tell you something?” he said.

“What?”

“You know when you walked in on me?”

“Yeah.”

“I was thinking about you.”

Jesus. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel about that. Flattered?

“That’s… flattering,” I said.

He turned his head so he could look at me over his shoulder. I met his gaze. He didn’t say anything else, just turned back again and shifted a little to get comfortable. God, he was something... The cold, clammy feeling I’d had before had subsided though and I closed my eyes to go to sleep.


	14. Chapter 14

Carlos and I knocked on the door. It was after sunset and it was gloomy in the narrow alley. There was a thin sheet of snow on the ground and small flakes were drifting down from the sky. I felt one land on my forehead.

The house had no windows facing this way, but the owner of the place must have suspected who it might be, because he sent one of the women to open the door. 

“Good evening,” Carlos said and we pushed past ‘her’ and into the house.

The guy ran a whorehouse. It was small, just two rooms downstairs, a kitchen and the ‘entertainment area’. That room was furnished sort of like a living room, but along one wall were a couple of booths, like fitting rooms in a clothing store. The dingy draperies were meant to offer some sense of privacy to whoever occupied them.

The place had a back door and the guy was frantically trying to open it, but it was blocked from the outside. Carlos and I had quietly snuck back there first and placed a plank we’d found beneath the door handle.

“You’re late,” Carlos said.

The guy gave up on the door. “I’ll pay,” he said. “I promise. The whole price. Just… give me a couple of days. Please.”

Atlan’s rules in business were pretty straightforward. Everyone paid the agreed amount, on time. Those who didn’t got one warning. We were here to deliver that warning.

The guy’s eyes darted from Carlos, to me, to Carlos, and back to me. I took a step forward.

“Please,” he said. “I’ll pay.” 

He was sweating.

“You can have her!” 

He pointed at a woman who had his back pressed against the wall, as if he was hoping to disappear into it. It was a young guy, he couldn’t be more than sixteen. His eyes were huge and shiny.

“She’s new,” the guy said. “You can have her. She’ll make an excellent wife.”

“I already have a wife,” I said. 

“And I’m a happy single guy,” Carlos said.

The guy tried the door handle again, then he made a desperate attempt to dive past me. I caught him. 

He wasn’t much of a fighter. I hit him in the face a couple of times, not that many because a face is hard and puts a strain on your hand. I sank my fist into his stomach and then we broke a couple of fingers. He ran a whorehouse so he didn’t need them to conduct his business. He could still manage to scrape together what he owed us. He howled, and cried.

Then we left. 

“You know,” Carlos said as we made our way down the street. “People don’t look at me the same way since you got here. Whenever we’re in a room, they look at you like you’re the fucking devil. I’m starting to feel emasculated.”

I shot him a glance. I had blood on my knuckles and I fished out a rag from my pocket to wipe it off. 

“Wanna grab some drinks?” he said.

“Sure.”

We turned down another street. I felt a bit guilty, I knew Barry was waiting for me, but I couldn’t exactly tell Carlos I had to go home first, to let my wife know I would be late home for dinner. And as much as I liked spending time with Barry, doing something else for a change was appealing. That felt me feel more guilty, because Barry couldn’t do that.

We went to a bar that took up two floors of a narrow building. It was loud in there, lots of voices talking at the same time. We ordered a couple of drinks and took a seat at a table.

“Here’s to paying double price for the shit we delivered,” Carlos said and raised his glass.

I raised mine. 

I worked mostly with him. We got along pretty well. I didn't know the other guys very well, I didn't know Carlos very well either, but I liked his laid back attitude.

I knocked back the whiskey.

“Think he’s gonna pay?” Carlos said.

I made a doubtful face. “Probably not.”

I thought about the young guy. Then I pushed that thought away, because there was nothing I could do about that. 

“Fuck, I’m hungry,” Carlos said and rose from his chair. “You want something? I’m buying.”

I raised an eyebrow. He smiled and spread his arms.

“I’m a nice guy.”

I smiled a little back. “Sure. Thanks.”

He came back a short while later with two plates. Chicken and potatoes. We stayed for a while, had a couple of more drinks. When I headed home it had stopped snowing. I pushed my hands deep into my pockets to keep them warm. 

Barry was already in bed. The room was warm and neat. I didn’t know if he was really a neat freak or if he just tidied up to busy himself. What few belongings we had were either in the cupboard or lined up in a row on a simple shelf attached to the wall. 

I pulled off my clothes and crawled into bed. I wasn’t drunk. For one, it took a great deal of alcohol to get me drunk, and secondly, I couldn’t risk getting shitfaced here, even if the idea had been tempting more than once. But I felt pleasantly warm and loose inside. And tired.

I woke up and flailed, because I thought I was about to fall out of bed. To my sleep-addled brain it seemed as if I was right at the edge of it, and my shoulder was being pushed, hard. Then I realized there were still a few inches of bed left between me and a drop to the floor. Barry’s hand was pressed against my shoulder.

The sudden alarm that had flared up inside me subsided just as fast and I felt dazed and annoyed.

“What the…”

“Turn around! I can’t sleep! You’re snoring!”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are! Can you just turn around? Please?” There was a hint of desperation in his voice.

I turned around to lie on my front. I just wanted to go back to sleep. What the hell was he doing, trying to push me out of bed? I pulled the blanket up to my chin, but that left my feet bare to the chilly air in the room. Fucking hell. I was too tired for this shit.

The next morning, when the alarm clock rang, I was in a bad mood. Barry didn’t seem to be very chipper either. After I had been down to the outhouse, I sat on the edge of the bed and wished I could have gone back to sleep. I had been dreaming, I couldn’t remember what now, but it had been something nice. 

Barry made breakfast. He did so most mornings. I wasn’t unaware of the fact that doing domestic work was one of the duties a prison wife was expected to perform. Sometimes I did the cooking, just so it wouldn’t feel as if he was waiting on me. But I was away for hours every day, working, bartering for the things we needed, so the cooking mostly fell to him. 

His neck and his shoulders looked tense and he had hardly said a word since we got up. 

“Did you have fun last night?” he finally said as he handed me one of the bowls.

I didn’t reply. I started eating. 

“If you’re planning on coming home drunk again, maybe you can consider not going to sleep on your back?”

I gave him an annoyed look. “I wasn’t fucking drunk.”

He made a sort of disbelieving face. 

“I could smell the alcohol,” he said.

His tone of voice wasn’t derisive, I didn’t think Barry did derisive, but there was a hint of something, like he thought I was full of shit.

I hadn’t been drunk. I knew that for a fact, so his insistence that I had been rubbed me the wrong way.

“I had a couple of drinks,” I said.

He was going to give me a hard time over that? Really?

“Sounds fun,” he said. 

“If you’re that fucking keen, I’ll get you a bottle.”

Most of the guys I worked with chose to take at least some of their payment in booze. I hadn’t done so thus far. There was so much we needed. 

“I’m not interested in getting drunk,” he said. 

I wasn’t interested in having this conversation.

“Don’t you think I would like to go out too?” he said. 

There was nothing I could do about that. 

“Go to a bar and have a few drinks,” he said. 

I hadn’t made the rules. What was he expecting me to do?

“Go out, see some people,” he went on, “have some fun.”

“What is it you want? You wanna go to a bar and find some other guy whose cock you can suck?” I glared at him. “That can be arranged, but I think you’d find you’ll get a bit more than you bargained for.”

He fell silent. Fuck this. I got up, grabbed my jacket and headed out.

It had snowed more during the night and my boots sank inch-deep into crunching snow. I headed down to the barn and lifting heavy as fuck crates felt good. Anger and frustration burned like coals in my chest. 

Did he think this was a fucking walk in the park for me? I had to constantly be on my guard. And it was down to me to keep a roof over our heads and to keep us fed. I didn’t mind working for Atlan, I didn’t even mind beating up some asshole who didn’t pay, I had done that shit before, I wasn’t a particularly good person. But I hated it here. The fucking stink of the place. 

And deep inside, buried as far down as I could manage, I was fucking terrified, because all that stood between us having what we had, and to have it all taken away, was my ability to convince everyone here that I was worse than they were. 

After a while I calmed down. And then the guilt crept in. 

What I’d said to Barry, that was fucking horrible. I’d threatened him. I would never do it, I’d never dump him in a place like the one Carlos and I had gone to yesterday, but it didn’t matter, I had still said it. What the fuck was wrong with me?

I should never have agreed to make him my wife. It was a huge fucking mistake, but I didn’t see how I could undo it now. Maybe if we went someplace else… but it wasn’t as simple as buying a damn bus ticket. And even aside from everything required to travel, he would have to change how he acted, or we’d just be right back where we started. Maybe I could teach him to fight? I wasn’t sure that was even possible. Then an ugly, selfish thought reared its head; if we somehow managed all that, he wouldn’t need to be with me anymore. 

It was all but undoable anyway. That we’d made it here was thanks to a great deal of luck. Not to mention that Barry wouldn’t want to go, since his dad was around these parts. 

Around noon we were done with the loading of the crates.

“Arthur,” Atlan said. “You’re working Christmas.”

I nodded. 

I didn’t care. I used to celebrate Christmas with my dad. When I was a kid it was a big deal, like it is for most kids, and my mom would usually come to visit between Christmas and New Year’s, which I always looked forward to. In more recent years Dad and I would usually just have dinner and then head down to the local bar for a few beers. It was nice, though. I would have fucking loved to be there now, but I wasn’t and I didn’t give a flying fuck about celebrating Christmas here. Barry was Jewish, so I doubted he cared either. 

When I got home Barry looked like he had been crying. Maybe it was because he was so pale, but it was easy to see. It made the guilt lodged in my chest twist painfully. 

I felt like a big lump of wood, standing there.

“Listen…” I began, but he cut me off.

“I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

Fair enough. 

The room was small and there was no place to go, so he went over to the bed and lay down facing the wall. It was quiet. It was warm in here, he had stoked the fire, and I pulled my jacket off. 

I got that he didn’t want to talk to me, but I had to talk to him, I had to apologize. I walked over to the bed and after a moment’s hesitation I sat down. 

I could see his back and his long black hair. 

“I didn’t mean what I said,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

He had told me, although not in great detail, that he used to do that. He’d go out to some bar, presumably a gay bar, and he’d find someone and blow him. It had come up during a conversation about his cocksucking skills, in combination with a confession from him that he’d never had a boyfriend. 

I’d had girlfriends, though, a few fairly long term, and my longest relationship had lasted five years. I felt exactly the same now as I used to do when I had fucked things up with one of them. But it wasn’t the same. Barry wasn’t with me because he’d chosen to, he was with me because he had to. He couldn’t break up with me and that knowledge weighed on me. 

“I don’t want to find some other guy,” he said, still with his back to me. “I’m in love with you.”

It was a little bit like a soft punch to the gut, hearing that. But I couldn’t claim to be shocked, not really. I felt like a fucking bastard, though. I could convince myself he was happy to have sex with me, because he was gay, and it was something we both got something out of, but love… 

I couldn’t return that. I cared a lot about him. He was more than my buddy, and in some ways I even thought of him like I would have a girlfriend, but I was a straight man. I wasn’t sure I was even able to fall in love with him. But we were in some kind of relationship and I felt something for him. It was fucking complicated. 

“I know,” I said. 

I looked at his back and then I reached out and took his shoulder. He turned and sat up. He looked sad. 

I leaned in and kissed him, my lips gently touching his.

“I don’t want you finding another guy,” I said then.

That much was crystal clear in my mind. 

“Maybe I should,” he said. “You’re an asshole.”

“Yeah, I am.”

We were both silent for a while. He looked at me and then he leaned forward and kissed me again, harder this time. He started pulling on me and I followed until I was on top of him. He hadn’t been exactly timid in bed before, but he was more aggressive than usual. There was something desperate in the way his hands were gripping me and I felt differently than I had the previous times too.

I wanted to do what he wanted me to, to make up for the fact that I wasn’t in love with him, and at the same time I felt this strange sort of urge to prove he was mine. My cock swelled. I was probably fucked up in the head. 

He went for my belt buckle and I started rucking up his skirt. I pulled his underwear down and he pushed mine down with my pants, and then he grabbed my ass and pressed me to him. I moved my hips instinctively, rubbing my erection against him. He was bucking up against me too, and his hands were gripping my ass. 

We were grinding against each other, like we were fucking. It felt good, but it wasn’t enough. I raised myself up a little on one hand and slipped my other hand between us. I gripped both our dicks and then we both fucked into my hand, rubbing against each other. The pleasure spiraled in my groin. 

“Say that I’m your wife,” he said, breathlessly.

I had never been one for talking in bed. I thought the wordless communication was enough. I had been with a couple of girls who liked dirty talk, but they had done the talking. I had no idea what had prompted Barry to say that, but it was fucked up. 

I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t stop what I was doing either, what we were doing.

“Say it, please…” he moaned.

Was this some kind of fantasy, a roleplaying thing? Or was he looking for assurance that I wasn’t going to dump him, because if nothing else he was my wife at least? I felt a little bit weirded out. 

But I said it. 

“You’re my wife.”

We were both breathing hard. I could feel the friction of both my hand and his cock against mine. Then we came, both of us spilling hotly over my fingers at the same time. The noises we both made mingled. I’d never experienced that with anyone else before, climaxing simultaneously.

I dropped down next to him on the bed, on my back. Neither of us moved or said anything for a little while. Then he rolled onto his side. I moved my head a little so I could look at him. 

“Do you think you could get us some lube?” he said. “I mean, grease?”

I could see how some lube would facilitate this, what we had just done. I didn’t even know what the fuck it was we had done, I didn’t have a word for it. It wasn’t mutual masturbation and it wasn’t him sucking my dick either. It was probably called something. 

“I’d like you to, um… fuck me,” he said then. “If you want to?”

Jesus Christ. I took a deep breath. He’d told me he was in love with me and I hadn’t said it back. And now he was asking for more sex, more intimacy? 

“I don’t know,” I said. 

There was also the factor that I had no previous experience with anal sex and wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about it. 

“Why do you want that?” I asked.

“Because it would feel awesome, doing that with you.”

I looked up at the ceiling for a moment. 

“But only if you want to,” he said. “Doing this other stuff is fine too.”

This other stuff felt less significant, in lack of a better word. Actual fucking, my dick in his ass, that was pretty much as gay as it got. On the other hand, I was already having sex with him, and since we were both dudes, I was having gay sex. It was just semantics. Still, I wasn’t sure.

“I don’t know,” I said again. 

“Okay.”

Another thought hit me then, probably because of how outspoken he’d been just now.

“You haven’t told anyone else about this? The things we do?” I said then.

He huffed out a small chuckle.

“Who would I tell?” he said.

“I know, but if you got to talking with someone, another wife, I don’t know…” I looked at him. “Other people here, they don’t do the things we do.”

There was nothing mutual about the sex other people were having and I was pretty sure there was no kissing happening either. 

“Yeah, I know,” he said. 

Of course, he too had witnessed Oliver and his wife, as well as the things that had taken place while we were with the caravan. 

“I’m not ashamed,” I said. It felt important to clarify that. I had a hard time believing sometimes that I was actually doing the things I was, but I didn’t feel ashamed. “It could cause trouble for us, if it got out that I…”

That I serviced him, just as he serviced me. But it felt harsh, saying it. 

“That you touch my dick,” he finished for me. He paused for a second. “Probably even just the fact that you kiss me.”

He had voiced exactly what I had been thinking. 

“I know,” he said. “I won’t tell anyone.”

I looked at him. “I like kissing you,” I said. 

I rolled over to face him and did just that. He kissed me back and it felt great. It felt sweet. I would kill anyone who tried to hurt him, no doubt about it. Maybe that was some kind of love.


	15. Chapter 15

On Christmas Eve I made deliveries to the bars around town. Most of them were small places, but there were a fair number of them. Now that I had been here a while and knew my way around, it was obvious that this town was bigger than the place where we had arrived. There were more people here. 

At first glance it didn’t look all that big, and it wasn’t New York City, but there was a maze of narrow, winding streets and the buildings that lined them were mostly two-story houses, some even had three, and people lived on top of each other. Atlan had told me this was the oldest settlement on the island, it dated back to the early 18th century. Some of the buildings probably did too. 

The snow had hid some of the town’s ugliness. It had been trampled in the streets and mixed with the dirt underneath, but rooftops and window sills were covered in a clean, white blanket. There wasn’t much Christmas spirit to be had though, except every bar I went to was full. Maybe that was people’s way of dealing with the holidays - drinking themselves into a stupor so they could forget what date it was. I wouldn’t have minded doing the same.

I put a crate on the bar, it was the same place Carlos and I had been to, and the bartender gave me a nod.

“This is timely,” he said as he picked it up. “We’ve all but run out. Want a drink, on the house?”

I nodded. I wasn’t about to turn down a free drink. The people we delivered to were generally respectful, but that didn’t equal friendliness. He poured me a drink and I picked up the glass, then downed it in one go. Atlan’s booze wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t the kind you savor. 

“Thanks,” I said and put the glass down on the bar.

He nodded. I left the rowdy bar and headed back out on the street. A guy was leaning over the wagon, a hand lifted as if he was about to put it into one of the crates. I pushed him back and he crashed into the opposite wall.

“You thieving?” I said.

“No, man…” He tried to back away, edging sideways along the wall.

I took a step forward. 

“I was just looking,” he said. 

His eyes swiveled this way and that way. There were people in the street, not a great many, but a few. No one moved to intervene. 

He was pretty young, maybe twenty-five, and in the faint light spilling onto the street from the nearby windows, he looked even younger. 

“I didn’t know what it was,” he said. 

There had been a shipment of new prisoners the other day. I had been at the docks, with Atlan and Carlos and some of the other guys in the crew. When the supplies had been loaded onto the pier, after the prisoners, and the ship had moved out to sea, we collected those supplies. Not all of it, but a significant portion. Matches, foodstuffs, tools, some ammunition, and other stuff that couldn’t be produced locally. We loaded it all into the warehouse, except everyone in the crew got a little something for their trouble. I got a packet of rice. 

Judging by his clothes, this guy was most likely one of the new arrivals. Maybe he had been just looking, maybe he had been planning to pilfer a bottle, but it didn’t matter. 

He tried to make a run for it, he was pretty quick, but not quick enough. I punched him in the stomach and he doubled over, which made it easy to knee him in the jaw. He fell to the ground, bleeding from the mouth. He coughed and the red sprays looked almost black against the snow. I could have beat him worse, maybe I even should have, but I didn’t want to, so I left him there. I didn’t bother to say anything. It wasn’t necessary. 

My next stop was the tavern. I carried three crates in through the back door. By the sound of things, it was just as crowded in there as it had been in the other places. The bartender and owner, I knew now that his name was Benny, came to the back room to have a look at the contents of the crates. 

“Very good,” he said. “Very good indeed.”

I noted down the delivery in my book. 

“Lots of new talent here tonight,” he said. “It might be… prudent if you were to send someone over.”

I looked at him. “Why?”

“I fear they have some trouble grasping that this here is a business, where food and drink and women are offered in exchange for payment of some kind. Such a misunderstanding could easily spread and it would be preferable if it was dealt with sooner, rather than later.”

Since Benny owned the biggest bar in town, he was a good customer. His arrangement with Atlan went beyond just buying whiskey from us, though. He was a source of information and helped keep the town under control. 

I looked at the door that lead out to the bar and then I shrugged. 

“I’m here now,” I said. 

Benny nodded his head. “Much obliged.”

He was weird as fuck. 

The bar was crowded, but I spotted the party in question almost right away. There were three of them. Three was the magic fucking number; they were drawing courage from each other. Maybe they knew each other from before, maybe they had met on the ship and banded together because they figured they’d be better off as a group.

They were pointing and laughing at the whores, shooting hard glances at everyone else. There were empty bowls and glasses in front of them, which they must have paid up front for. Benny wouldn’t serve anyone and accept payment after the fact. They were tough looking guys; it wasn’t likely they’d committed some petty crime and then been sent here because of some perversion of justice. Most likely, all three of them had done something that warranted a life sentence. 

“One of them has already tried to grab a bottle from behind the bar,” Benny said. He had sidled up by my right elbow. “They keep saying, and I quote ‘This is a prison, there are no rules here, we can do whatever the hell we want’ and other things along those lines.”

Three was a challenge to take on alone. I could do it, as I had before, but I couldn’t be sure I’d get out of it unscathed. I was armed, I had my knife, which I had moved to my belt instead of my boot for easier reach, and an axe which Carlos had provided me with. But they could be armed too. I had been, when I got here.

I was thinking about how to deal with them when I spotted Oliver. He was sitting by a table, but when our gazes met he made his way over to me. He smiled.

“Need a hand?” he asked.

Two against three was better than one against three, so I nodded. 

“You go left, I go right,” I said.

“Alright.”

“Don’t kill them unless we have to.”

We moved forward. As we passed a table I picked up an empty bottle and when we reached the three guys, I smashed it into the back of the head of the closest one. He dropped forward over the table and his friends flew to their feet. Their chairs toppled over.

They weren’t armed. If they had been, they would have drawn their weapons. I could have drawn mine, but I didn’t and I wouldn’t, unless I had to. 

These guys weren’t like the one whose ass I had kicked outside the other bar; they had been in fights before, but it didn’t take very long for Oliver and me to get the upper hand and then we beat the living crap out of them.

Benny stepped forward when the two were moaning, bloody messes on the floor. My pulse was pounding loudly in my ears and I felt out of breath. Oliver put a foot against the guy whose head I had smashed with the bottle, and he slid off his chair and onto the floor too. 

“There are rules here,” Benny said, leaning forward and addressing the two who were still conscious. “You’d do well to remember that.”

We dragged the three guys out through the front door and onto the street.

“If you gentlemen would care to clean up, you’re welcome to do so in the back,” Benny said when we came back inside. 

In the back room there was a bowl of water and some rags. Both Oliver and I cleaned our hands. My knuckles were raw. 

Oliver laughed. 

“That was fun,” he said. 

Fun wasn’t the word I’d use. But something happened, when you were fighting. Everything boiled down to a single point - the need to win. 

“Thanks for the help,” I said. 

“Where’d you learn to fight?”

I didn’t reply, just made a sort of noncommittal grunt. If he thought about it for more than two seconds he would have his answer. There really was only one place where they taught you to fight, and not in a sporting manner. But I didn’t want to get into that. He likely had a similar background and since he was a bad egg now, there was every chance he’d been one back then too. I had been an MP and no one in the service liked the MPs, especially not the crooks.

“Did you find work?” I asked instead.

“Yeah. I hunt, mostly.”

“If you’re hungry, or thirsty,” Benny said, over by the doorway, “it’s on the house, of course.”

Oliver raised his eyebrows at me in a silent question. I could tell he liked the sound of that.

“I gotta get going,” I said, making it sound as if I had to get back to work.

I didn’t, I had finished my deliveries for the night and I had a few hours off, but I didn’t want to have a drink with him. I was grateful he’d come to my aid and I wasn’t so stupid I was going to insult him after that, especially not since he could be useful again at some point in the future, but I didn’t fucking like the guy.

“Alright,” Oliver said. He slapped my upper arm. “It was good seeing you.”

I nodded at him. 

I went home. I had dinner with Barry and then we had sex. We cuddled for a bit, but then I had to go out again. I tucked him in.

“What are you doing?” he said, laughing. “I can’t move.”

“You gotta stay warm.”

He wriggled his arms free from the blankets and caught me around the waist. 

“I’d be much warmer if you were here. You’re like a furnace.”

I smiled down at him. Then I kissed him.

“I gotta go.”

I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay here, in the warmth, with him, and sleep. He put his hand against the side of my face and brushed his thumb over my cheek. I kissed him again, but then I took advantage of the fact that he was only holding me with one arm and stood up. I threw another log onto the fire and pulled my jacket on. 

“I’m borrowing this,” I said and picked up his shawl. 

Folded and wrapped around my neck, it looked like a scarf, like anyone would wear in cold weather. 

Atlan had put me on guard duty for the night. There wasn’t always someone inside the barn, but there was always someone watching it from the outside, usually more than one person at a time. I had only done it once before, probably because Atlan figured I was more useful making deliveries and ensuring we got paid, but tonight I would be at one of the lookout points.

I relieved a guy called Quentin on a second floor landing across the street and he handed me the rifle before he headed down the stairs and disappeared up the street. It would have been great to be indoors, but someone lived in the apartment behind me, someone who allowed their doorstep to be used as a guardpost. Maybe they were paid for their trouble, I didn’t know. 

At least I was out of the wind, but it was still cold as hell. I couldn’t hold the rifle continuously, my hands would freeze, so I placed it against the wall, within easy reach, and put my hands in my pockets. 

I had bought both Barry and me a change of clothes. Right now I was wearing almost everything I owned, which were two pairs of underwear, two shirts, my sweater and my jacket, as well as Barry’s shawl. If I could I would have worn both pairs of pants as well, but it would have gotten too bulky. A hat would have been nice, and a pair of gloves.

I moved around as much as the small space would allow, to stay warm, while I kept my eyes on the street. There wasn’t much traffic. It was close to the docks and not a lot of people had any reason to pass by here. Unless someone was planning to go drown themselves in the ocean. 

I thought about Oliver and wondered briefly what unit he’d been with. But I didn’t want to think about him, so I thought about Barry instead. The scarf smelled like him. If I lowered my nose to the wool the scent of his skin and his hair filled my nostrils.

We hadn’t talked any more about his inability to go out and socialize. Neither had we talked about the fact that he’d told me he was in love with me. 

That surprised me a little. Maybe that was a difference when you were with another guy? The women I had been involved with, for more than just a one-night-stand, had generally been very keen on talking, about everything, but about feelings especially. 

I felt aware of it though, now that he had said it out loud. In a way, knowing it, for sure as I did now, was a little odd. It was strange being the recipient of those feelings. Like I was somehow different, because of it. I didn’t deserve it, though. I tried, but I knew it wasn’t good enough. 

I stamped my feet, to get the blood flowing to my toes. I had thought a lot about the fact that he was home alone, every day, with nothing to do but housework. I had to do something about that, but I didn’t know what. He liked computer games and movies, but I couldn’t provide either of that. I had to come up with something.

The rest of the night I thought of nothing at all. I just watched. Waited. That was another thing you learned in the Army, aside from fighting - how to wait. I stared at my little pocket of the world as the hours ticked by. 

A little after dawn I was relieved by William. I handed him the rifle, neither of us even said anything, and then I left. I didn’t go straight home, though, despite the fact that I was tired and could really use some sleep. I should have gotten a few hours between my shifts, but doing stuff with Barry instead had been too tempting to resist.

I figured I should get myself a hat and gloves, or at least see how much it would cost, so I went to a shop. It was early, but I knocked on the door. After a little while it was opened by the owner.

“You open?” I asked.

“I am now.”

I stepped inside. It was warm in there, warmer than outside at least. 

“You got any hats or gloves?”

“I might.”

He rummaged about, looking through boxes and piles of junk. There was a lot of stuff in there and the whole place smelled like a thrift store. 

“You could try these.” 

He handed me a pair of leather gloves and went back to sifting through the contents of the boxes. The gloves were too small. That’s when I spotted some books on a shelf, behind the table that served as a counter.

“How much you want for those?”

I pointed and he turned his head. 

“The books?” he said.

I nodded. He made the face people did as they thought, then named a price. It was a pretty fair price. 

“I’ll take them.”

“Alright. Still want the gloves and the hat?”

I could maybe buy both.

“Too small,” I said with a nod at the gloves. A thought popped into my head and before I had the sense to discard it, I asked: “You got any grease?”

I felt a little bit like I had as a teenager, the first time I bought condoms. That was a strange fucking feeling to experience in your mid-thirties. 

“Yeah,” he said, clearly not thinking anything of the request, despite the fact that it was obvious what I was going to use it for.

He placed a jar on the table and told me the price. Fuck, that was expensive. I couldn’t afford all of it, assuming he even had a hat and gloves in here somewhere.

“Just the books and the grease,” I said. “Can you hold it for me and I’ll come back in twenty minutes?”

He made a dispassionate face.

“I know who you are,” he said. “I know you’re good for it.”

I hadn’t gotten anything on credit before, so that was new. I nodded.

“Appreciate it,” I said. “I’ll be by later.”

I pocketed the jar of grease and grabbed the books and then I headed home. I hoped Barry liked reading. He’d talked about books, at some point, hadn’t he? One of the books was The Two Towers, by J.R.R. Tolkien. Even I knew that one, although I had only seen the movies. I hoped Barry had too, or maybe read the first book in the series. The other two were titles I didn’t recognize. 

He was up when I got home. I remembered then that it was actually Christmas morning and that made me feel a bit silly, but I handed him the books. 

“You bought books?” he said, a note of astonishment in his voice.

“Do you like to read?” 

“Yeah…” He turned the books over and looked at the backs, then he turned his gaze to me. 

I shrugged a little. “It’s not much, but it’s something to do…”

“Thank you.”

He closed the distance between us and kissed me. He held the books with one arm and placed his other hand on the back of my neck. 

“Do you want breakfast?” he asked then.

“Yeah. Then I gotta get some sleep.”

I left the grease in the pocket of my jacket. I felt self-conscious and awkward about the fact that I had bought it. He hadn’t brought up the subject of fucking again, and I wasn’t sure how, or even when, I was going to bring it up.

I ate and then I pretty much passed out on the bed. 

I was awoken by a knock on the door. Barry was sitting next to me, with one of his new books open on his lap. He made a move to get up and I grabbed his arm. 

“Wait here,” I said. 

I had taken my belt off but now I grabbed my knife, before I moved over to the door. I turned my head, to make sure Barry was still on the bed. His eyes were wide. I moved the knife over to my left hand and then I used my right to open the door, making sure it shielded as much of me as possible.

It was Henry. I breathed out. He eyed the knife and I lowered it and took a step back so he could come in.

“Dad!”

Barry flew off the bed. They hugged. 

“God, I was so worried something had happened to you,” Barry said.

I knew he’d been worried, he had talked a lot about it. 

“I’m fine,” Henry said. “Just fine. How are you?”

“I’m good.”

Henry had brought a pair of rabbits, already skinned and gutted. And he’d brought some stuff for Barry as well, a thick, knitted sweater and wool socks, which he must have bartered for. 

“Thank you,” Barry said. 

“I’ll head out,” I said. 

“You don’t have to leave,” Barry said. “I could fix us some lunch.” He looked at Henry. “Are you hungry?”

“I’ll do it,” I said. 

Henry shot me a glance. 

The room wasn’t big and I could hear everything they were saying. Barry was sitting on the bed and Henry on the chair. The bed where Barry and I had done a great many things aside from sleeping. Henry had told me last time that if I laid a hand on his son, he would kill me. I had no doubt he would try and that was a confrontation I really didn’t want, for Barry’s sake. I wasn’t sure Henry would believe it had been consensual, given how he was still looking at me with a great deal of distrust.

But Barry didn’t seem to have any intention of telling him anything about it. He showed Henry the books and they talked about them for a few minutes, then Henry started asking Barry about his life before he had come here. I guessed he wanted to catch up on everything he had missed. Barry dutifully answered his questions. I recognized a lot of the things he said, he had told me about it.

“Did you have a girlfriend?” Henry asked.

“No, not really.”

I caught Barry’s eye for a split second. 

“What about that girl who lived on our street, you always liked her,” Henry said. “Iris?”

Barry raised his shoulders a little.

“We were just friends,” he said. “And then she met someone else in high school. A quarterback. So…” 

He was lying his ass off. Maybe not technically telling untruths, but he was trying to come off as straight, like he had liked this Iris girl, but she fell in love with someone else. 

I’d heard about Iris too. They had been friends, he’d told me she was more or less his only friend, but after high school they didn’t see each other as often. But he had never mentioned her quarterback boyfriend, probably because his existence hadn’t been significant in any way.

Naturally, I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t know why he didn’t want to tell his dad that he was gay, and to be honest, it wasn’t any of my business. Except if he decided to tell his dad he was in love with me, then it would most likely become my business pretty fast. But he didn’t. 

When the food was ready we ate and Henry addressed me for the first time.

“What did you do to end up here?” he asked.

Barry froze. I was sitting next to him on the bed, but I could see him in my peripheral vision.

“I killed a guy,” I said, but I didn’t get any further before Barry cut in.

“The guy murdered his mom,” he said. “He did terrible things to her!”

I turned my head and looked at him. He returned my gaze and he looked a bit shamefaced, probably because he realized he’d just betrayed a confidence. 

It did feel strange to hear him talk about it, to tell the truth. I didn’t like to talk about it, but I had been about to tell Henry anyway. I figured it was better he knew the reason I had killed a guy. Although I wasn’t planning on telling him how I’d done it. 

“Yeah,” I said to Henry. “That’s the story.”

Henry nodded a little. 

“And what did you do before?” he asked then.

Barry had revised his past, to some degree, so I didn’t feel bad about revising mine. I skipped the enforcer part, the odd jobs, only about half of them legal, and told him I had been in the Army.

“Military police,” I said. 

He looked surprised. 

“I don’t exactly advertise around here that I was a cop,” I said.

“I can understand that,” he said. “That’s probably wise.”

I went out soon after that, to give them some privacy. First I went to pay what I owed to the shop owner and then I walked down to the barn. I didn't have a whole lot else to do.

“Can't stay away, can you?” Carlos said when he saw me.

He had taken to wearing an ugly old hat. I didn't know if it was something he had acquired recently, it certainly wasn't new, or if it was something he always wore when the weather got cold, but it made him look pretty damn strange.

Atlan came in from the courtyard. He handed a piece of paper to Carlos and then he turned to me.

“Heard you took care of a problem over at Benny's place yesterday,” he said and then he nodded in a way that was probably meant to say ‘Well done’ or ‘Good initiative’. 

Then he left again.

“It was some newcomers?” Carlos said.

I nodded.

“Wanna tag along and help me get some firewood?” he asked.

“Alright.”


	16. Chapter 16

Henry had left when I got home.

“He's staying in town for a little while,” Barry said. “He's coming back tomorrow.”

“Where is he staying?”

“I don't know, he didn't say.”

Barry frowned a little, looking as if he was wondering if that was significant in some way. I didn’t think so. Most likely Henry had rented a cot somewhere, that was the cheapest option, unless he was squatting, but there wasn’t much real estate available for that. The good places went fast and people tended to hang on to them, like we did. 

“I don’t want to tell him I’m gay,” Barry said. “Do you think I should have told him?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you want to tell him?”

“I guess… because I don’t want to disappoint him any more than I already have. I don’t know how he’d react. And I think in his mind I’m still nine years old, in a way. I don’t know, it just didn’t feel right.”

I nodded a little. 

“It’s up to you,” I said. 

“So, you’re not mad I didn’t tell him about you?”

That would cause a shitstorm we didn’t need, of that I was pretty sure. I had my own, selfish reasons for wanting to avoid that, but I was thinking about Barry too. Anyone could see how fragile his and his dad’s relationship was. 

“I’m not mad,” I said. I paused for a second. “He’s your dad.”

“Would you have told your dad?”

I tried to imagine bringing Barry home and introducing him… as what, my boyfriend? The word felt outlandish. Dad wasn’t a homophobe, though. I actually thought he would have been cool with it, after some initial shock. But it was difficult to picture it, simply because back home I would never have met Barry, or anyone like him. 

“Things are more complicated here,” I said.

“Yeah…”

It started snowing later that evening and it snowed all throughout the night. Come morning the wind had picked up too and by the time I had made my way down to the barn I looked like a snowman.

Carlos and I made deliveries around town, but the weather just kept getting worse and worse. There was still a few hours of daylight left, but it felt like dusk had set early. I couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of me. The wind whipped the snow around and it hit my face hard, like shards of ice. I was freezing my ass off, my hands especially. I should have bought myself a pair of gloves and not that damn grease.

We dropped off a crate at a small bar that was empty aside from the owner who lived in the backroom. When we got back out on the street Carlos and I looked at each other.

“This is a storm,” he said. He was almost shouting to make himself heard over the wind. “We gotta get our asses inside.”

I nodded. We made our way back to the barn. I ducked my head to keep the wind out of my eyes. 

Atlan was outside, on his way to lock the place up. He opened the door again when he saw us and the three of us put the remaining crates and the wagon inside. 

“See you when it has died down,” he said.

The walk home was arduous, my feet sunk deep into the snow and the wind whipped my hair across my face. Those who were lucky enough to have shutters on their windows had closed them and the streets were dark and deserted.

I was glad I'd gotten us a new batch of firewood the other day. Some of it was piled by the wall in the room, the rest on the landing outside the door. I had considered piling it downstairs, outside the privy, but had decided people might be more tempted to steal it there.

It was a relief to step into the warm room. Barry had lit a candle and was reading, but he got up from his seat on the bed when I came in.

“Wow,” he said. “You look like Santa Claus.”

I shot him a glare. I was cold and wet. And no one wanted to look like Santa Claus. 

“Because your beard is all white…” he said.

I shrugged out of my jacket and stepped up to the stove. I held my hands out in front of it. The warmth felt scolding hot against my fingers, as if I had stuck them right into the fire itself. I felt Barry’s hand on my arm.

“You should get out of those clothes,” he said. 

He was right. I started peeling my clothes off. I dropped them on the floor where I stood and Barry picked them up. I’d gotten us a piece of rope, it was tied between two nails in the room, and Barry hung my clothes over it. I noticed my other pair of pants was already hanging there.

“You washed them?” I asked, unable to keep a trace of annoyance out of my voice. 

He grimaced.

“I didn’t think you’d need them so soon,” he said. 

I sighed. I wasn’t being fair. “Nevermind,” I said. 

“Here…” He grabbed the blankets from the bed. 

I wrapped one around my waist and draped the other across my shoulders. I wiped a corner of it across my face. What I wouldn’t have done for a hot shower… 

The floor was cold, so I went to sit on the bed. 

“Did your dad visit today?” I asked.

Barry nodded and joined me on the bed. 

“He went home, or wherever, when the weather started getting worse.”

He rubbed my arms. I had a vivid memory of my dad doing the same to me when I was a kid and had been out playing in the snow for too long. I pushed the memory away. 

“What did you do to your hair?” Barry asked.

“What? I didn’t do anything to my hair.”

“It looks like a bird’s nest.”

He was one to talk. He proceeded to begin to comb it out with his fingers. I felt a little bit as if I was being groomed like a monkey, but it was pretty nice at the same time. 

“How come you never told me you were a cop?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Did you arrest a lot of people?” he asked. 

“Look, you can’t tell anyone about that,” I said. “I told your dad, but that was to ease his mind…”

“I know. Why do you always think I’m going to tell people everything?”

“I don’t… I just want us to stay safe.”

“I know.”

He sat with his arm around my back and leaned his chin against my shoulder, then he slipped his other hand inside the blanket and caressed my chest. I liked it when he touched me like that. I liked it a lot. 

I yawned. 

“You’re tired,” he said. “You should get some more sleep.”

That sounded like a really tempting idea.

“What are you gonna do?”

“Read. Then I’ll fix us some dinner.”

I slept for a few hours, then I woke up when Barry shook my shoulder. The wind was still howling and it was full dark outside. I had to piss but I didn’t want to go outside so I used one of our two cups.

“I’ll be sure to wash that thoroughly,” Barry said, with an expression of mild disgust on his face.

“Don’t worry. I’ll do it.”

He had made dinner, I had slept right through that, but now we ate, both of us drinking from the same, still usable cup. He smiled a little. Then he smiled some more.

“What?” I asked.

“You should always be naked when we have dinner.”

I raised my eyebrows but couldn’t keep from smiling. 

“Oh, you’d like that?” 

“Yeah, I would.”

He laughed a little. I smiled and shook my head. He kept looking at me and there was something funny about the way he did it. Then he got up from his seat. He walked over to the cupboard and when he turned around he was holding the jar of grease.

“What’s this?”

We lived in one, tiny room. I should have known he would find it. 

“Um…”

“Is it what I think it is?”

I didn’t really know what to say. I felt slightly embarrassed. “I…”

He unscrewed the lid and held it under his nose.

“What’s it made of?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

He glanced at me. 

“We don’t have to do anything with it,” I said. “I can barter it for something else.”

He smiled. “Do you wanna do something with it?”

Did I? I had bought it, hadn’t I? Maybe that was presumptuous of me, except he had asked me to fuck him. It was his suggestion.

“Yeah…” I said.

“You don’t sound sure.”

I took a breath. “You’d have to show me how.”

His smile widened. He came over to where I sat on the bed and slid his arms around my neck.

“I’d be happy to,” he said. 

His gaze met mine. 

“But only if you want to,” he said. 

It was fucking, wasn’t it? It was bound to feel good. 

I nodded. 

We started the same way we had before, kissing and touching, but then when things got more heated Barry said he had to be prepared. 

“Do you want to do it?” he asked. “Or I can show you?”

“Which do you want?” 

He smiled at me.

“I’ll show you.”

“Yeah, alright.”

He reached for the grease, which we had left on the chair by the bed, next to the burning candle. 

Even though I had never done it, I’d seen anal sex in porn movies. That was part of why I’d never understood the point of it. It was another hole, so what? But I had never seen this part in a porno. I watched as Barry fingered himself and it was fucking erotic. I hadn’t expected that. Part of it was the thought of being inside his warm body, but part of it was seeing _him_ doing this. 

When he was done he slicked up my cock. His hand felt slippery.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“Are you ready?”

He nodded. “Go slow. Really slow. You’re big.”

“Okay.”

I thought he was going to turn around, that was the image I had in my head of how two men did it, but he lay down on his back with his legs spread. I lay down on top of him, keeping my weight on my hands. He slid his hands up my arms and smiled. 

I had to use one of my hands to line myself up and I looked down to see what I was doing. His body was a different landscape. I was about to fuck him in the ass and I felt a little bit nervous, but also excited. 

I pressed the head of my cock against him. It felt different. It also felt pretty strange to not wear a condom. The head slipped in. That felt pretty great.

“Wait,” he said. 

I pulled back out. “Did it hurt?”

“No, I just meant hold still.” He smiled. “Do it again and then hold still a little.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You’re not.”

He pulled a little at my shoulders. 

“I want you,” he said.

“I want you too.”

I pushed inside him again, just the head, and then when he told me too I pushed in a little more. I slid inside him torturously slowly. It felt fucking amazing. The pressure and the heat… and it was so tight. By the time I was fully sheathed, I was sweating. 

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah. Are you?”

I nodded. I wanted nothing more than to move my hips, but he’d told me to go slowly. He smiled at me and I smiled back. I was inside him. God, that felt wonderful. 

“You can move,” he said. 

I pulled back, just a little, before pushing inside him again. Then again. I held back, in part because I didn’t want to come in two seconds flat, but also because I was a bit afraid of hurting him. It didn’t feel the same as with a woman, but it felt just as great. 

For me. I watched him and I knew him pretty well by now; he didn’t look like he did when I jerked him off. 

“Does this feel good for you?” I asked. 

“Yeah.”

I glanced down. His dick was hard, but it wasn’t at full mast. I stopped moving my hips. 

“Don’t lie,” I said. I didn’t want to fucking do this if he didn’t like it.

“I’m not! It feels good. But there is this kind of angle thing, that makes it feel even better…”

“Okay. How do I do that?”

“Well, I’m not entirely sure, because I haven’t actually done this before…”

“What?”

He’d told me he’d done it, for fuck’s sake! I pulled out. 

“With anyone else!” he added quickly. “I haven’t done it with anyone else.”

I had moved back and he sat up. He looked slightly embarrassed. 

“I’ve only done it to myself…” he said. “With a… dildo.”

I felt like an idiot. He’d talked me through it and that was fine, because I thought he knew what he was doing and I wanted it to feel good for him. Actually, I wanted it to feel awesome for him. 

It was quiet for a second. For a split second I thought of him fucking himself with a dildo and couldn’t help but to think that would have been a sight to see. I was clearly a pervert.

“Are you mad?” he asked.

“I’m not mad. But I…” I sighed. “Fuck, Barry, I want you to like it.”

“I do. I do like it.”

He moved closer and put his arms around me. 

“Do you like it?” he asked.

I nodded. I did. But that wasn’t the point.

I pushed his hair back and held the side of his face. His dark eyes were close to mine. 

“Wanna try again?” he said.

“Yeah. But you gotta tell me how you want it.”

“It felt good, I promise.”

He smiled and I smiled back a little. I kissed him. 

We tried again and this time I experimented with the angle until he gasped. I felt a jolt of satisfaction. 

“Yes… Keep going…” he said. 

Doing that was harder than he made it sound, because despite the earlier interruption, I was pretty close to the edge, pushed by a combination of how it felt to be inside him and the knowledge that I was. 

He looked amazing underneath me and the friction against my cock was exquisite, warm and smooth and tight. I fucking loved him.

I thought it, but I didn’t say it. In the back of my mind I knew it wouldn’t be right. We were fucking. I wasn’t sure I’d feel the same way after I had come. 

I held back my orgasm for as long as I could, but eventually it overpowered me, it felt too fucking good, the sensation in my cock was all I could think about. 

When I opened my eyes, Barry was looking at me. 

“Sorry,” I said, out of breath.

He smiled and shook his head a little. I glanced down at his cock, still hard and pointing up at his stomach. I kept my weight on one hand and wrapped my other around his erection. It didn’t take long before he came too. After that I pulled out and lay down next to him. 

We lay still for a moment and then I turned my head and looked at him. He smiled and I smiled back.

“You good?” I asked.

“Yeah. What about you?”

“Fucking awesome.”

He laughed and I laughed too. 

“I loved it,” he said.

I thought about the thought that had popped up in my head while we were doing it. I couldn’t say it, because I still didn’t know for sure. 

“Me too,” I said.


	17. Chapter 17

We dozed for a little while and then we fucked again. Our room felt like a warm, cozy bubble while the storm raged outside. This time I fingered him. I’d seen him do it and he instructed me a bit and it wasn’t very difficult. I liked touching him that way, it was so intimate. I found the right spot, too.

“Oh my god…” He threw his head back. His fingers dug into my shoulder. “Oh my god…”

“Can you come like this?” 

I had to ask, because I honestly didn’t know.

“Yes, sometimes…” He sounded breathless. I really liked that sound. He looked at me. “But I want you inside me. Wanna try it from behind?”

“Yeah.”

From behind felt just as good. 

Because I had already come once, I knew I would last longer this time around, but he had the same anatomy as I did, so he would most likely last longer too. I slid one hand from his hip and round to his front, so I could grab his dick. I had to concentrate a bit, to keep thrusting at the right angle and jerk him off at the same time, but that had the added benefit of making me less focused on my own cock. 

His back was pale and his skin looked warm and smooth in the glow from the candle. It was wasteful to keep that candle burning, but it was so worth it, so I could see him. Moving inside him was the greatest feeling ever. 

I felt exhausted afterwards, but in a really good way. 

I opened my eyes to a pale light when there was a knock on the door. The windows were frosted over. It was very quiet and it took me a second to realize it was the absence of the sound of the wind pressing against my ears. There was another knock.

“There’s someone at the door,” Barry said. 

It was chilly in the room. I pulled on my still damp pants and shirt, then waited until Barry had gotten his dress on, before I went to the door. It was probably Henry, or maybe Carlos if I had been expected to show up to work by now, but I still grabbed my knife before I opened the door. 

It was a good thing it opened towards the interior of the room, because there was so much snow on the landing that it would have been difficult to force it open otherwise. It was Henry and I put the knife away.

“I wanted to make sure you were not snowed in,” he said. 

It was a completely white world out there. There were no sounds, as if the snow had muted the whole town.

“We’re good,” I said. “You weren’t out in it?”

“No, no.”

“Do you want some breakfast?” Barry asked.

“If you can spare some…”

“Sure we can,” Barry said. “You brought us food yesterday.”

That was yesterday? It felt a lot longer ago. I exchanged a quick glance with Barry before he turned towards the stove to get some life into that fire. He was much better at that than I was. Using the firesteel and flint was damn tricky and I had a tendency to lose my temper before I managed to get a fire going. Barry seemed to be able to just snap his fingers to create a spark. 

Henry took a step into the room. 

“It’s gonna be awhile before the town is up and running again,” he said. “Lots of shoveling to be done.”

I should probably head down to the barn as soon as we had eaten. I figured snow shoveling might be in my job description, since it was a necessity for being able to make deliveries. 

“Are there often snow storms here?” Barry asked.

“There’s usually one or two each winter, and…”

Henry stopped talking. It only took me about a fraction of a second to realize why. The jar of grease was still on the chair next to the bed and he had seen it. I barely had time to mentally scold myself.

“You fucking bastard!” He pulled the knife he had on his belt and threw himself at me.

I jumped back, but the room was small and there wasn’t much space to move. I heard Barry scream. I got hold of Henry’s wrist, to prevent him from sticking the knife in me, but I didn’t want to deck him. 

“Dad! No!” 

I was both bigger and stronger than Henry, but I couldn’t hurt him, he was Barry’s dad. Henry was trying to pull his wrist free and kept trying to punch me with his fist.

“No, Dad, no!” Barry yelled. He grabbed Henry’s shoulder and attempted to pull him back.

I caught Henry’s other wrist and he proceeded to try to kick me, going for my knees. For a brief moment we struggled. 

“I love him!” Barry yelled.

He was trying to get between us and then Henry’s expression changed, just a little bit, a hint of confusion and doubt mingled with the rage. 

“Don’t hurt him!” Barry said. “I’m gay, and I love him.”

Henry stopped trying to kick me. A second ticked by and nobody moved. Another second. 

“Barry, get out of the way,” I said.

“No. Dad, you have to listen to me.” 

Henry looked as if he was struggling to take in what he was hearing. 

I met his gaze. “I’m gonna let you go, if you promise you won’t knife me.”

After a second’s hesitation he made a move to take a step back and I let go of his wrists. Barry stepped in front of me. It tugged at my heartstrings the way he did that.

“I should have told you…” he said to Henry.

He glanced over his shoulder at me. He looked frightened. I stepped up next to him and he put his arm out, as if to stop me.

It was quiet for a beat.

“You’re telling me…” Henry said then. “That the two of you…”

He looked from Barry to me and then to Barry again. There was still a great deal of suspicion in his eyes.

“Yes,” Barry said. He shot a glance at me, as if he was worried I might take offense at being implicitly labeled as gay.

But labels didn’t fucking matter. I was in a relationship with him and that was the truth.

Henry still didn’t look entirely convinced.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Barry said. He sounded unhappy.

“We’re together,” I said.

“He's not making me do anything.”

Henry’s stance was still tense.

“You're gay?” he said to Barry.

“Yeah…” Barry's voice sounded small. He didn't want to tell his dad, and now he'd been forced to. It made me feel bad.

Henry's gaze went to me. “And you too?”

Barry turned his head to look at me. I could see him out of the corner of my eye. He opened his mouth to speak, but I spoke before he had a chance to say anything.

“Not really,” I said. “Just… about him.”

I shot a glance at Barry. 

Henry frowned.

I didn't feel comfortable explaining my sexuality or my feelings to anyone, and particularly not to the father of the guy I was having sex with. But I had no choice. He'd try to kill me again if he thought I was taking advantage of his son.

“I love him,” I said.

Barry's eyes widened. I should have fucking told him last night. This wasn't how I wanted him to hear it. Even if I wasn't in love with him, I did love him. 

Henry blew out a breath. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said.

“That was me,” Barry replied. “I didn’t want to tell you. I thought you might be disappointed.”

Barry looked at me again and I could see the question there on his face, plain as day. Did I really mean that? Or had I said it just to appease his dad? I put my hand on his back and the gesture felt a little odd. Last night we’d been as close as two people could physically be, but having an audience made it feel as if there was some kind of barrier between us. 

Henry shook his head. “I thought…”

He took another deep breath, as if to steady himself. 

“I was ready to kill you,” he said to me. 

“I know. I don’t blame you.”

A small frown appeared between Henry’s eyebrows again.

“How old are you?” he asked me.

“It’s not like that,” Barry said. “I’m showing him stuff.”

Jesus Christ. I shot Barry a dark look. He didn’t have to tell his dad the damn details.

Henry held up his hands as if to stave of any further information. 

“I’m thirty-six,” I said. I was going to be thirty-seven soon. I wondered when Barry’s birthday was. I was pretty sure he had never told me and I hadn’t asked. 

Barry jumped when there was another knock on the door. I went to pick up my knife again. I motioned for Barry to step back and I noticed, with an odd mixture of relief and gratefulness, that Henry’s stance had changed to one of alertness, as if he was ready to help if there was trouble. 

But it was only Carlos. He was wearing his stupid hat and he had stuck his hands under his arms. 

“Hi there,” he said. “Ready to get to work?”

“Yeah. No, I haven’t eaten anything yet.”

“Can you grab something on the go? Atlan is probably expecting us.”

“I can fix you a sandwich,” Barry said behind me.

I looked questioningly at Carlos. Did we have time for that? He nodded. 

I moved to the side so he could get in from the cold. He nodded at Henry who nodded back. I pulled on the rest of my clothes, including Barry’s scarf. A sandwich was not the same thing here as it was back home. The basic principle was the same, but other than that there wasn’t much similarity. 

“Mind if I use your privy?” Carlos asked.

I shook my head and he went back outside. 

“Here.” Barry handed me the sandwich. 

“Thanks.” I looked at him and he looked back at me. “You okay?”

He nodded. I felt extremely self-conscious about doing it, but I leaned forward and gave him a quick kiss. It was what I would have done if we had been alone. It was what I would have done back home with a girlfriend. Henry knew about us now, so there was no reason for me not to. 

Barry smiled a little at me afterwards. He looked a little nervous and a little embarrassed. I smiled back at him. I wished I could have stayed, but maybe it was good if the two of them got a chance to talk alone. At the very least I’d be blissfully unaware if Barry decided to share any details about our sex life. 

“See you,” I said to Henry.

He nodded. “Yeah.” He looked as if he was going to say something else, but then he didn’t. I guessed it was a lot for him to take in. 

Carlos was waiting for me, standing in a snowdrift down in the alley. The entire alley was one big snow drift. I had to use the privy too and after that we set off. My clothes weren’t dry and they felt icy cold against my skin. The only upside to trudging along in snow this deep was that the effort would help me to get warm.

“You’re renting her out?” There was a trace of incredulity in Carlos’ voice. It was faint, but I heard it.

“No. That’s her dad.” I didn’t like referring to Barry as ‘her’, but keeping your pronouns straight was important. 

Carlos raised his eyebrows. “No, shit?”

He was quiet for a few seconds. 

“That’s tough,” he said then. “One of the few things that can keep a man sane in here is knowing his family is alright, back home. And that maybe some trace of you will live on.”

That made me think he probably had children, but I didn’t ask. If he wanted to tell me about it he would.

We saw some people trying to clear the snow from their doorsteps, but the town was mostly quiet, almost peaceful. 

“You got any kids?” Carlos asked.

“No. Not that I know of.”

I shot him a look and he smiled. It made creases deepen around his eyes.

“You?” I asked, because I figured he probably did want to tell me.

“Two. A boy and a girl.” He paused. “They’re in their early twenties now.”

There was a note of astonishment in his voice, as if he found that hard to grasp.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Forty-two.” He smiled. “I got started early.”

I smiled back.

“How old are you?” he asked me in return.

“Thirty-seven.”

I wasn’t planning on celebrating my birthday, so I could just as well start being thirty-seven now. 

As I had expected, the task of the day was snow shoveling. I worked hard, to stay warm. The mood in town was different, as if the clearing of the streets had bred a temporary camaraderie. My hands were giving me grief, though. It was too damn cold, holding the shovel. I was worried I might end up with frostbite, if not today then at some point before winter had passed, so I made my way to the same shop I had been to the other day.

“You got any gloves?” I asked, same as I had last time.

The shopkeeper started going through his piles. Eventually he found a pair that fit me. They were a little worn, but the leather was thick and there weren’t any holes in them. They’d last me a good long while. We haggled for a bit, but eventually we agreed on a price. I really wished I’d had more stuff to barter. 

Barry was alone in the room when I returned. 

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

I watched him, looking for signs that he wasn’t telling the truth. 

“He’s okay with it,” he said. “And okay with us.”

I nodded. Barry looked down at his knees and then back up at me. 

“That thing you said…” he said. “Was that just for my dad’s benefit?”

“No.”

His expression changed into one of hope and awe. It made something squirm inside me, like I was lying to him, but I wasn’t lying. What I felt for him wasn’t the same as what I had felt for the women I’d been involved with. But maybe in this place, that didn’t matter. Maybe in this place, this was what love looked like. 

I sat down on the bed next to him. 

“I love you,” I said. I had only ever said that to two people before in my life. But it felt good to say it, like something warm was expanding inside my chest. 

He smiled and I smiled back. 

“I love you too,” he said. 

We kissed and his lips were so warm and soft against mine. When we parted he stroked my hair. 

I made a hesitant face. “I sold the grease,” I said.

“What? Why?”

“I had to get some gloves and they were expensive. It was either the grease or food and we need the food more. I’m sorry.”

“Oh. That’s okay.”

I kept looking at him. He smiled a little. 

“It’s okay, really,” he said. “I like your hands, too.”

I smiled back and he kissed me again. 

My hands… I still hadn’t given him a blow job and I felt a little guilty about it, since he’d done it to me so many times. Perhaps it was time I did something about that. 

I wondered what sort of sounds he would make. I wondered if it would feel as intimate as I imagined it would. I leaned forward, pushing him down onto the bed. I was about to find out.


End file.
